A Different Take Options

Almost every magickal paradigm shares one basic practice with regard to a complete Noob: they require the Noob to take on a new name as a symbol for referencing a new “magickal personality”.

Considering this has caused me to start wondering and contemplating this common practice.

Seems to me that this “magickal personality” is an Artifical Entity. By “artifical” I do not mean what fake, which how that term is popularly used. Instead, I mean created. Specifically: a “magickal personality” is that which a Noobie Mage names and creates – and then subsequently gradually grows through various stages through working the Art.

Yet that Artifical Entity is not a servitor.

That which basically differentiates a servitor and a “magickal personality” compared to each other is: a servitor is created for operating independent to a Mage – while a “magickal personality” is not created for operating independent to a Mage. Indeed, a "magickal personality" is that which a Mage puts on, enters into, operates from within... etc...

Another difference is that servitors can be grown to become egregores – while a “magickal personality” are grow to become something else. But before I get into what “magickal personalities” grow to become, I am going to associate a single, and ancient, term here for simply referencing “magickal personalities” and for providing an intuitive ledge from which you might be able to leap ahead and grasp what I am getting at here before I spell this out a bit more.

Instead of being a servitor, a “magickal personality” is an Avatar.

Yeah – I know that specific term has been hurled around according to all kinds of ways over the years. And I know where the word originally is from – and how it is most often popularly used these days to reference either picture icons, or video game personae. Yet I hope that, given the flexibility of the term over time, you will be able to allow me to use it here as I have (and will) - and that you playfully will be able to try it on, and “run with it” a bit as I am using it here - without mistakenly thinking that I am talking about Hinduism, picture icons, video games, or however else anyone else has used the word avatar.

So – to move on – in a nutshell, here is what I discern:

A Noobie Mage creates and names an Avatar. The Avatar is a vehicle through which a Mage then successively cultivates during magickal work. To use the differentiation of magickal work as I have been elsewhere in these forums: such methods can generally be considered as either thaumaturgical or theurgical.

Theurgical magick work results with growing the Avatar for eventual consummation with the so-called “Higher Self” or “Holy Guardian Angel” or “Divine Genuis” (or whatever a specific pathway prefers to call it).

Okay – what do you folks think about this assessment and explanation?

I can already have some questions of my own further along this line that I am considering, such as:

1. Is said consummation a communion with the “Divine Genuis”? Or is it a different scenario? i.e. Does the matured Avatar become the vehicle through which the “Divine Genuis” can fully, and optimally, incarnate through the Avatar – which in turn interacts with events in this world via the physical vechile (the body)?

Note on #1: those questions rest upon discerning a difference between communion and incarnation. In the case of the former, the result is a fusion of Avatar and “Divine Genius” – such that the two become one with no further distinctions between them being possible. A new entity is created. This differs compared to incarnation, because - in the incarnation scenario - although the “Divine Genius” operates through a matured Avatar, a difference would continue to exist between Avatar and “Divine Genius,” in the same way that a difference exists between a spirit incarnating through a human body. This however leads to other questions connected with those that follow in #2.

2. What exactly is a Mage, such that one can create an Avatar for such consummation? Is a Mage merely a human fooling around with various personas? Or is a Mage really some other kind of entity, in relation to the “Divine Genuis”, with the penultimate purpose of creating and growing an Avatar for the purposes (whether fusion or incarnation) of said “Divine Genius”?

Note on #2: the rub with these questions is – if a Mage creates and grows an Avatar for full incarnation by the Mage’s “Divine Genius”, then what happens to the Mage? Is the Mage just pushed out, annihilated, something else entirely… when the “Divine Genius” fully incarnates? Or what? A similar issue exists with regard to considering the outcome as being communion, instead of incarnation: once Avatar and “Divine Genius” fuse, what then happens to the Mage who created and cultivated the Avatar component of the newly created “Divine Genuius+Avatar”?


Insights, questions, and comments most welcome.

I've played a bit of Mage, it's a fantastic game, was going to make a story for a few of my freinds to play but never got round to it.

Funny you should bumb this thread now because i've been intending to initiate myself recently as i've never really done it, an i just don't feel like i am who i am.
Pigeonholed into the box's people think i should fit into, but don't.

In the past i have considered using a Mage character sheet for this task, but i decided against it because of all the fictional extras and warping of genuine spiritual concepts
But i genuinely like the idea that you 'create' an Avatar with a name that you then become, it's spot on.

As a young adult i found myself in a reasonably powerful but unbalanced state so i used a weird looking puppet called jack to personify the aspects of my charactor that i didn't want to deal with right then (because i wanted a relationship with a woman)
Worked a treat, i was the Cool Mysterious guy with powers that she and i wanted for a year or so, and believe me when i say that puppet was just about the creepiest funnyest perverse mute thing you had ever seen in your life!
Anyway, naturally the relationship had to end and the puppet had to get burnt for my sanity's sake, an then came the years of being a creepy funny pervert.. not pleasant years, but nessesary ones.

Not sure how relevant that story is, in a way it's the opposite of the initiation avatar your talking about, but it makes me think of where the leftovers would reside and how healthy it would be to take on a new form only partially.
This is certainly something to consider very carefully i believe, the world has got enough part time hero's and Mages who can only cast when in the company of people who know their 'name'.

Quite a-lot of wisdom in tales about beans.

Do you know of any initiation rites for organized religions/cults using a similar concept?
Getting a new name is pretty standard, which is in essence quite similar, but do any of them take it further?

I met a couple of guys who wrote for the original Mage: The Ascension material (superior to Awakening, IMO). They were surprisingly - or not so surprisingly - inspired individuals with a great deal of occult background although neither of them practiced. Still, they chose writers on their ability to tap into occult history and tradition in order to craft the game close enough to reality to be immersive and fantastic enough to be more fun than real life.

I have had two really significant spirit guides, both of which served to shape my life towards magical practice and lifestyle. The first I had communicated with since childhood, and in my early teen years I came to the understanding that this guide was ultimately an expression of a deeper/higher aspect of myself, and this guide indicated at that time that this was the pinnacle of what I had to learn from him. He was subsumed by my waking consciousness, and I did not communicate with him again, but grew substantially in a short amount of time.

This happened again shortly afterwards, and my second guide brought me a much deeper awareness of myself as well as furthering a more subtle understanding of my Work, you could say somewhat deeper and more subtle than my previous guide. I knew, at this point, that this guide also must be an expression, but was unable to absorb him as I had the other for many years, and his explanation was that I was not adjusted appropriately - he was the 'tip of the iceberg' showing itself but there was a great deal more excavation to do before I could integrate his elements into my own awareness. This happened about five years ago, and the experience was similar but more... maturing I suppose.

Now, I encountered Mage when I was about 19, and the similarities were not lost on me then, either. I believe this is not a strictly necessary process, I think it's one of many different kinds of initiation that can happen. I do not know a process of fabrication under which this can be made to happen, as it happened to myself spontaneously, but I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility. It seems to me that the value of these experiences, for myself, was that I was guided and instructed by a more aware aspect of my own consciousness or spirit, to a place where I was specifically 'groomed' to be able to accept that awakening process. I made some very significant life choices based on the input of these two guides - without that input and encouragement, I most certainly would not have arrived where I currently am; either in terms of actual life circumstances, or in terms of awareness. I have no guide currently that I am aware of, but this most recently acquired awakening may not be sufficiently integrated yet; my psychic faculties have grown considerably since that time and I live increasingly more... in the 'flow', as well. Being patient enough not to manufacture a new one 'artificially' is a challenge for me, but for all I know I am intended to do so.

I did once examine, a couple of years ago now, the possibility of evoking these parts of the self for the purpose of undergoing this process intentionally. I don't know what makes a person 'ready' for that process, or what the nature of those inner parts necessarily is - it's not an experiment I ever followed through with; integration with my second guide brought a sense of providential progression, the sort of thing that one accepts and watches for, while living the best life one can until then.

Now, as to the specific idea originally discussed, regarding the Avatar/Magical Persona, I think that there are, as usual, two 'layers' to this process, one entirely artificial and superficial, and one significantly more creative and taking place on a much deeper level of psyche. In my experiences, for instance, I did not perform magic through my guides - I was instructed, told to make adjustments, guided to understanding of the symbols and tools and the structure of the paradigm that I was co-creating with them. But, I performed magic on my own, did not assume their 'form' etc. However, the quality of my magical practice changed drastically after the first integration, and no less drastically albeit in more subtle ways.

To me, this is what an Avatar is, though. Whether spontaneous or evoked, it is a part of us that we are not initially able to fully comprehend and be aware of, and it guides us to that point where we can. It could be a called a vessel of awareness, or a repository which, when the time is ripe, is ultimately broken in the process of assumption.

The magical personality, to me, sounds more like partitioning on a different level, something slightly more superficial because there doesn't seem to be an end goal of integration, and the magical personality is not autonomous, and is not composed of anything more than what we create consciously in order to utilize it. It may be crafted with a purpose, but crafted only with the tools that we have available to us at that time. It must become obsolete as our awareness grows to supersede that of the magical persona. There must come a point, if we are in a growth process instead of just a magical practice, where assuming the persona we have created for this purpose would be limiting.

That's my bit, in any case. We may be saying the same things.

peace