Section V

Using Your New Awareness

Now that your chakras are feeding you with an occasional stream of mysterious signals, you might feel a bit overwhelmed. After all, you’re experiencing a version of reality that you never knew was there before. It’s rather like discovering that your legs for the first time and learning to walk, all over again. Some practice will surely help.

(NOTE: There is no way to apply this chapter until after you have rended the veil. See previous chapter.)

Sensing and “feeling out”

Have you ever been in a house that felt dark and creepy? Or, on the other hand, one that was warm and welcoming? Your new senses will tell you the reasons why that is. In fact, professional psychics get hired to do exactly that for television shows; they’ll walk around a room and explain what they’re feeling (a long-forgotten murder, etc). This is made possible by a sort of imprint left in the astral plane at that location, which is like an open book to the clairvoyant.

Practice reading the imprint on simple items, at first. You might pick up an heirloom in an antique shop and try to determine what sort of person once owned it. Were they female or male? What sort of attitude did they have toward life? The answers will be perfectly apparent with a small amount of gnosis, a quiet moment to clear your mind. There is no “imagination” involved because you’re not required to invent an answer… just to interpret the new, exotic feelings you’re getting.

Interpretation is rather more difficult than it sounds. If the owner of the object was a woman, you may encounter a gentle, motherly sort of feeling. It is easy to infer from this what sort of attitude she might have had — a loving, nurturing side, at least. The problem is that words like “motherly” will not pop into your head automatically, just as the words “salty” or “sour” do not automatically pop into your head when you bite into a piece of food. It takes interpretation, and, more importantly, experience to cross-reference by.

Thus, the feelings you decipher from the astral realm will be nothing more than abstract concepts. You will have to learn to speak this language just as you did English. Using abstract concepts in meditation is a matter of necessity — because right-brain consciousness is used primarily in alpha state.

Using abstract concepts

A person generally exudes his personality on the astral level just as a plate of Italian food will reek pleasantly of spices. It’s up to you to gain the experience needed to pick out the separate smells (sweet, pungent, musky) and define them in human terms (basil, garlic, oregano). Likewise, objects that the person touches will get “smeared” with the “smell,” and the environments he frequents will positively full of “odor.”

The “smell” is comparable to electromagnetic energy. You’ll notice that if you rub a magnet against another metal object, it will become magnetized, too, at least to some extent. And for all intents and purposes, you can think of magical energy as this interesting attractive/repellant force. Just like using an electromagnet, you can “charge up” from your current level of power (more on this later). If witchcraft was a language, this would be the lungs behind your voice.

So, what are the words? Again, they are abstract concepts. “Hear me dark and blessed night/Hear now of my lonely plight/Without my lady’s hand to hold/My aching heart grows long too cold/Thrice the moon shall shine/Then she shall be mine!” This little spell is merely sending out a signal “NEED FEMALE,” or something to that effect, which is, in truth, a very simple abstract concept. Try to grasp the feeling that this spell is trying to get across, without using words or pictures, and you’ll understand. Just as music can subtly change your mood, so should the language of magic.

Why do we have to use abstract concepts in our magic? Simply because it is the language of the astral plane. One of my friends explained his first experience with the phenomenon while trying to speak telepathically with an animal. When he finally got a reply (quite to his surprise), it was a greeting. The silent response was not simply “Hello,” but rather “Hello,” “Bon jour,” “Guten tag,” “Aloha,” “Nihao,” “Hola,” “Konnichiwa,” and every other greeting in the world all wrapped up into one soundless thought. The astral language is universal, and thus extremely useful for communicating your desires to the cosmos.

Electromagnetic pulse technology

You’ve learned that you carry around a sort of soul-energy (also known as “chi” or “ki” in Eastern philosophies — I call it “essence”) and that you “reek of the smell,” so to speak, on the astral level. Let’s take this idea one step further: exuding that energy.

Let’s say you’re near the girl of your dreams, and she doesn’t notice you. Well, obviously you’re just blending in with the scenery, as far as power-level goes. Instead of continuing the process of exuding this energy in minimal amounts, just being a “background” odor, why not force some of it to smell stronger?

You can do this by feeling-out your own astral side, then desperately willing it to echo forth from you just as a sound wave bellows from a speaker. It’s hard to explain just how to do this — but, if your senses are as developed as they should be by now, it’s almost instinctual. You’ll know you’ve gotten it right when you feel the pulse wave leave you. This is much the same feeling as you get when you’re frustrated enough to “scream silently” — it’s as if your very soul shrieks. In a way, it does — and other people can hear it subconsciously, through the thoughts that constantly trickle down from their own astral selves. So then, of course, the lady should look over at you if you’ve done it properly, without really realizing why. This is called vibrating.

“Vibration” is much like using sound waves. The astral plane has different frequencies, just as your radio does. On each frequency, there are different levels of reality (just as you’ll find different radio stations across your dial). The reality you see every day is on a slightly lower frequency than the astral reality, which contains your “soul.” In vibrating, you’ve tapped into that astral frequency and made “harmony” that those tuned in can hear. (There are higher and lower astral frequencies, which you’ll discover if you experiment with vibration enough). “Vibration,” as such, is like putting music into the radio station. Changing the essence of your messages changes the “harmonics” slightly.

This is important for you to know later in the advanced chapters, but at the moment I’ll explain psychic energy as “smell” because describing how something smells is just as intellectually hard to grasp as how music makes you feel. There are no logical words to encompass exactly how it works. You’ll understand it only through experience.

Vibration is an extremely simple concept as far as witchcraft goes, but it’s one of the most essential tools you’ll need. In the attention-grabber example, there were no thoughts expressed in the pulse wave — just energy. This works well for making people take notice, but to truly master witchcraft, you need to work the abstract concepts we’ve talked about into your method of vibrating. I do this every day for simple tasks — like vibrating, for example, at someone who’s blocking traffic… a suggestion that now might be a good time to change lanes. You’ll be amazed at how often this works.

You do this by saturating your essence with the abstract concept of your desire. For example, let’s say you wanted to do a spell for money. You would exude and concentrate, on the astral plane, the feeling of wealth. This is not to say that you imagine yourself as a rich man; but instead formulate and pour out, so to speak, the feeling that every wealthy man has when he receives a paycheck. It is one of confidence and security, associated with the ideals of money. Again, it is hard to explain since it is an abstract concept, but you’ll get the idea when you try it. (This is only part of what would be a money spell. For more on completing a working such as this, follow the “Building Blocks of a Ritual” charts throughout the course).

IMPORTANT: Make sure your concepts are welcoming and positive. In the example above, it would cause disastrous financial consequences if you projected a feeling of “I’m broke! I need money! I can’t pay my bills on time!” because you would be involving the opposite concept of what you wanted in your spell. Also, it helps a great deal to be confident that you’ll get what you want — and after doing a few successful spells, having confidence in your abilities is rather easy.

Section V Exercises

1. “Read” an item every day. It’s best to practice this after only a moment of concentration, on an object with which your intuitions can be verified.
2. Practice formulating and exuding abstract concepts. Some are more difficult to latch onto and use than others, so try a various few. Some examples: people, places, colors, weather. (Remember that this exercise doesn’t involve visualizing anything, nor thinking in words)!

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