This is the second in a series – because of the esoteric nature of the subject material, it is highly recommended that you read Volume One before you try to make sense of this one!
By Lidellia
By this time in the budding magician’s training, they are ready to embark on the most formidable task they will ever undertake in their magical practice – the evolution of their own mind and perceptions. Magic works for a magician primarily because they have trained themselves – exhaustively – to believe that it will. Without the clear mindset of knowing you’re capable of doing something that you learned early on was impossible – to bend reality to your will merely by willing it – spells simply will not function. The stark, solid reality of the outside world imposes itself so firmly in our minds that we must work very hard to ‘unlearn’, to realize the deeper nature of reality and come to terms with the fact that we can shape it using the proper mind-set. For in the end, it is only one’s mind that creates magical effects – words, reagents, and spell formulations serve only to guide the mind in a task which is nearly impossible. Impossible primarily because it is so elusively simple.
To this end, then, the magician embarks on a philosophical journey, reshaping their world view to permit such realities as turning an apple into an orange with merely a word, a gesture, and a thought.
The first task is for the magician to realize the principle of maya. Maya is a word which can have many definitions. Let’s see a few.
Maya. The whole of the world as we see it.
Maya. The true nature of reality.
Maya. The symphony of all the world’s mana.
Maya. The sum of all objects, emotions, creatures, and things.
Somehow, we need to see it as all these, and none. You see, the primary block which keeps us from practicing magic is that we think of the world as solid. Here is the average person’s mindset –
I was born into this great big world. The world doesn’t care much about me – it responds to my wishes and demands only by way of labor and effort. Everything around me is solid, and I can’t really affect that much, because rocks are hard and people’s minds don’t change all that often. How I get through life has a lot to do with luck, because things happen all the time, and they very well could be bad just as easily as they could be good. I’m just one person, alive for but a moment in the existence of Carador, and like a spark emerging from a fire, I’ll burn (brightly, I hope!) for a flicker and then I’ll be gone. Yes, in the end, I’ll die and be gone, and the world will go on without me.
As you can see, the mindset is characterized by the person feeling separate from the world, from the belief that objects and other people are generally hard and immovable, and that we come and go in this life, but the world goes on largely without our consent.
These thoughts are myths – illusions, if you will, created out of our mind’s interaction with mana. The magician, to create magical effects, must realize that there is the reality of mana – an undifferentiated, pure energy – and there are our minds, interpreting the mana’s emanations. From that union maya is created.
Maya, then, is a world view, and consists of seeing the world as non-solid. From simple observations, the magician recognizes that the apparent solidity of objects is a manifestation of our perceptions, and nothing more. The most famous of these observations is one borrowed from the Jeddan religion of Lakiratai. At night, the magician is taken out to a clear pond or lake. They are told to observe the moon’s reflection upon the water, and to point out where it is. Then the magician is moved to another location at the water’s edge and told to point out where the reflection is. Now, of course, they point to another place on the water’s surface. A few more times they repeat this, and then they are asked where the moon is reflecting on the water’s surface. Within a few moments, most aspiring magicians realize the truth – that the water is reflected over the entire surface – in effect, the whole pond is glowing. But our limited perspective makes it appear to be only in one place.
From here, the magician usually falls into a series of realizations. Is the moon reflected at all, or is the reflection only a combination of the moon’s glow, the water, and my own perceptions? Might all reality be like the moon on the pond’s surface – pure and brilliant, but taking the appearance of forms based on where I stand?
From here, the magician is helped to explore other aspects of reality. Does the example of the moon on the pond only work for reflections, which do indeed change their placement based on where we stand?
Rainbows, we see, also change their position based on our own. A man who is handsome to one girl is plain to another. A single food can be loved or hated by different people. A chunk of steel is seen as very solid by the baker, but as no harder than clay to the smithy.
These realizations are then clinched by demonstrations of magic, performed by the teaching magicians, during which the aspiring mage or majae actually observes ‘reality’ being manipulated before their eyes.
Our reality, we learn, is based primarily on what we believe. On what we’ve learned in our lives. On our preferences. On ‘where we stand’ on an issue. (A phrase no doubt taken from the example of the moon on the lake.)
Everything, at this point, becomes subjective to the magician-in-training. The entire concept of "objectivity" is the fodder for jokes passed back and forth between tables of magicians. And with these new realizations at their disposal, the thinking person might embark down any of a number of philosophical paths. It is critical for magical training, however, that these three realizations become their primary focus—
First of all, that the world is not ‘solid’ as we think it is. Second of all, that the world is composed primarily of our concepts of it. And third, that by changing our perceptions, we can thus change the world.
It is this third realization which not only allows the doors to open for the aspiring magician, but also assures that most magicians, in the beginning, are rather thoughtful, caring individuals. When you begin to see that you can change hate into compassion simply by shifting your viewpoint, and that if you harbor ill thoughts, ill will come to you, you start to live with more deliberate perceptions, and one’s outlook usually improves. It becomes obvious that a person walking about with a scowl is making their own life unhappy – wherever they go, people’s smiles fade away, and no one really wants to talk with them. Then they go home and complain about how people are so rude and unfriendly, and their scowl only gets bigger!
Unfortunately, as the magician matures in their training, and spell-casting becomes second nature, such precepts can be forgotten in place of new ones, such as the realizations of how much power one wields in comparison to the average person. It is then that egos grow, and sorcerers and sorceresses are born. It is here, too, that magical training shows it deficiencies – in spiritual training, such as that presented in Lakiratai, the path of realizations is taken with a final goal in mind – the eradication of the personal ego. After that, it is truly impossible to be ‘evil’. Magical training, however, is more practical in its aims, and concerns itself with only so much of the ‘spiritual’ beliefs so as to attain its goals of manipulating reality.
Maya, then, is the magician’s world view – a view that looks more like this –
The world is what we see it to be. Others see it as solid. I see it as malleable. Everything around me is nothing but a combination of ethereal energy and my mind. The only limits I have in shaping the world around me are those I impose myself, by falsely thinking that the world is solid and unmovable. My power will be in direct proportion to how thoroughly I can eradicate the ingrained training I’ve had all my life – that the world is ‘solid’ reality. For in truth, it is naught but a mist, shaped by the wave of my hand and the wind of my breath.
That is maya, the magicians’ world. After they have a firm grasp on such ideas, it is time to move on to the concept of mana. But that, my friends, is for Volume Three.