Section VI

Ballet Positions

If you’ve studied anything about ballet, you’ll know that all of the exotic choreography in full-scale productions is the product of a mere five dance positions. And the same rule applies with magic — once you know the four basic moves, the rest is just creativity.

The first two are centering and grounding. The usual witchcraft literature calls this “grounding and centering,” but, to me, it makes more sense in the order presented here. However, it does help to repeat the process of both a couple of times, in varying order, for good measure.

Centering

This is getting your consciousness shut down to where all you feel is yourself. Beyond the worries of the day, beyond all of your hopes and fears and dreams, this is the “kernel,” the core personality program that your everyday thoughts and feelings are spawned by. If you recognize this from earlier in the course, you’re right — it’s just gnosis. But it has an additional twist.

“Centering” involves compressing this soul-core down into a tight ball, located at your solar plexus — the manipura chakra (see Section III). This is also known as “the one point” in Aikido. Remember that you are inside your own consciousness — you must become that one point. You’ll know when you’ve gotten it right, because suddenly the term “centering” will make perfect sense. You’ll be hanging in a perfect balance between your head and your feet; it’s truly a unique experience.

Grounding

Now that you’re a point of consciousness in an endless vacuum, put your “feeling out” to use. You may be quite surprised to find that there are other consciousnesses here, too. In fact, there’s a huge one, extending in all directions, beneath you. This is the Earth.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to go off on an environmentalist ecosystem spiel as so many have in the past. I won’t bother to explain exactly how the Earth has a consciousness, because it would only serve to complicate things. For the moment, just realize that everything has a consciousness to some extent; some are simply operating on a different scale of time. And for the Earth, your lifetime is the blink of an eye.

“Grounding” is creating a psychic connection between yourself and the earth. You do this by dropping anchor, so to speak, from your manipura chakra through your muladhara chakra (see Section III) and into the Earth. Again, don’t imagine it, force yourself to feel it; sinking like a stone through water, deep into the ground, and imbedding itself there. Open yourself generously as you do this, offering yourself to the Earth for acceptance. You can only take if you give.

Like a garden hose, all of your excess energy will flow out and down through this link. If you’ve managed to ground correctly, it will happen so much and so quickly that you may be frightened that the Earth is sucking you psychically dry. But it always works out — like a projectile at the top of an arc, the exchange will slow, halt, and reverse. You’ll be filled up with fresh, clean, raw psychic energy from the ground. It’s like a metaphysical oil change.

Linking

Pretty much everyone has experienced that phone call in which someone says, “Oh! I was just thinking of you!” It’s not a coincidence — it’s just a subconsciously-created astral link. Sometimes it filters through the mental barriers we have and we act on it. Thomas Jefferson observed and tested this phenomena by occasionally writing a full, detailed letter to someone on a specific subject; then he would rip it up and throw it out. A few days later, he would mysteriously receive a letter from the guinea pig discussing the same topic.

Centering yourself, feeling out someone or something else (such as we just did with the Earth), and establishing a connection between them, is a very standard method of magic called linking. You send, or draw, whatever you like through the line, and usually snap the connection afterwards. You can link to objects just as well as people — you’ll do this later with things like candles.

How do you snap the connection? By formulating the abstract concept of something sharp and pulling it through the link. The connection should snap like a rubber band.

For reference, realize that any time a spell calls for “a lock of hair” or “a personal item” from your target, it’s only used in order to establish a link. Just thinking about the person during gnosis, if you have a good feel for him/her, is usually potent enough to connect to them. (Besides, it’s annoying to have to “feel out” a person from their fingernail clippings.)

You may wonder how ESP and magic can work over such a great distance. In truth, astral consciousness can extend as far as you’re willing to believe it can, because astral dimensions are purely subjective. Simple linking, such as you read about above, can easily connect to people or objects in other countries, if that was what you were going for. You’ll learn to appreciate this flexibility, with a little experience.

Charging up

Grounding is an essential method of magic because what you’re linking to — the Earth — is an almost inexhaustible supply of raw psychic energy. As opposed to simply linking to smaller objects, grounding to the Earth can fill your cup to overflowing, and you can pour the excess energy into a spell (to give it oomph). The more energy pulled into a spell, the more powerful the results will be.

To “charge up,” or draw extra energy from the Earth, remember the electromagnet analogy. With each passing moment you’re connected to the Earth, your energy field grows stronger, and as a result, your magnetism increases. You can use the attractive force to pull even more energy in. In effect, you become a sort of tornado, growing in destructive power as you gather mass from debris.

A second method of charging up involves your crown chakra. Open it generously just as you did with your root chakra, and link to something from above. Some people consider it the cosmos, others consider it God, and others have similar religiously-influenced explanations; but in any case, this is where that much-mentioned “white light” comes from. Sitting upright, feel-out your chakras until you are aware of the straight line connecting them. Then rock yourself repeatedly in a gentle circle, creating a thin conical path of energy flowing down your spine. As the radius of your rocking grows gradually wider, the attraction of energy becomes more pronounced — again, creating a tornado-like vortex. You’ll know if you’ve gotten it right, because you’ll appreciate how silly it is to have to “imagine” a white light streaming down from above.

You can use either method of charging up, or both, to draw in as much energy you can handle into your ritual.

The combination of gnosis and excess power creates a state of mind occultists have termed ecstasy. You’ll know if you’ve achieved this. It feels much like getting a rush of adrenaline from a roller coaster, and the experience is very intense. Thus, this should only be attempted by those of sound mind and body.

Section VI Exercises

1. Find a quiet place to ground and center. Repeat the process a few times to make sure you’ve done it correctly. (You should know when you’ve managed it.)
2. See if you can “charge up” and then let the excess energy flow back down to your ground. Don’t resist the flow of energy; you are a reservoir, not a dam.

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