The Magical Personality, Its creation, use and purpose. Options

Have been reading into W.E Butler recently, offers a good break from the usual authors...his writing style is much easier to relate to, cites examples of situations whilst teaching rather than saturating the reader with rigid logic and information, manages to place it into context better than Regardie for example although the two aren't to be compared. Anyway... he talks of creating a, 'Magical personality' something that most do but perhaps do not fully take to when choosing a motto for themselves, he also talks of the power of hypnosis and how it can be used to this effect and in magic in general, a very intresting topic. Have to say I'm ''slightly'' dissapointed as he dosen't go into much detail... in fact he goes into it in one book then promises to break it down in another but dosen't... his works are written in a certain style, perhaps too much the opposite of Regardie and Crowely, his approach makes it difficult to follow as no certain format is laid out but is offered enpassing, as though he were addressing a room full of students and has no time for detail or emphasis.

The idea is to create a persona distinct from ones self for use in magickal workings, using hypnotism to program the mind into assuming said persona when a certain item is put on, gives the example of a ring which is probably best. Of the opinion that his works are to be peiced together as in the chapter in, 'The Lords of Light' he talks of using self hypnosis to structure ones personality/mind in general then promises to explain further in, ''The Magician'' where the outline of a method is given. Thinking of using hypnosis in such a way is brilliant, programming the mind to be able to work on the inner planes instantly rather than struggle to achive and maintain that state of mind, controlling the will in that fasion to the point of being able to fully percive the work. To be honest the magical persona part irks with me as I'm not sure how so much can be done under one name and circumstance and then done away with under another... was wondering if anyone knows of anyone who goes into further detail on how to properly go about it as the 4 pages given is not much to fall back on when you find you have a split personality or worse because of it all., don't you find your true name at the end of the work?

Can se why people perfer to keep their own identities rather than adopt a new one while working, intergration would be an issue at some point I think but there you go, its all very intresting, tempted to give it a go as its linked to B.O.L work which is the next step in my magical career.

Has anyone taken to creating a magical personality or used hypnosis to aid their practice?

Peace
.M.

Actually, yes. In the height of my exploration and progress, in retrospect, I used a Magickal persona and Magickal name. I was Ulric Xenos, the Xenomancer. This was my alias. This was my name. My name. A name given to myself, one that I could be proud of... until I did some unsavory things with my power, causing me much self-disgust and, in turn, dissociation with that alias. To give it a double-whammy, I also lost every bit of power I had with it when I chose to literally sever all connections I had with my alter self, Ulric. He had my power, or so I believed from the evidence shown from the experience of the severing.

Now, my guess is as good as anyone's. Was Ulric truly gone? I doubt it. Because energy cannot be destroyed, only transferred. Logically, if you hold air in a container, and destroy the container, that unit of air unites with the rest, to become one with it's source. Because I never felt such reunification, so I suspect that Ulric is out there (or in here? *points to head*), somewhere, still holding onto that energy, probably clinging to the only bit of anything he can have so that he can continue his existence.

This method works. And it works well. But be wise with it. Be sure to establish a clearly-defined heirarchy between your fundamental personality and this subservient magickal personality, or else things will go awry. As Jiminy cricket always said, "Let your conscience be your guide!" Be sure that it is your fundamental personality which is your conscience. You are more or less creating a servitor who "rents" your body and brain, existing with you symbiotically. You give it energy, it opens the gates to power.

Sometimes it may be necessary to use ceremonial magick (I say this in retrospect, because I honestly think this would have worked in my case) to discipline your alter self in case it starts to think contrary to your wishes.

Also, be careful what you expose yourself to when assuming your alter role. As anything which is young, the early experiences are the ones that last as permanent impressions. So deciding to use your alter personality when in the throes of libido may influence your alter personality to become more sexual. Doing so while working out may make it more disciplined.

You share memories with it, in terms of crystallized memory (in contrast to fluid memory, which is a real-time feed of information), but aside from that, consider it to be almost like your child.

Again, this method indeed works. Be very careful. Best wishes in your endeavors.

Addendum: Come to think of it, my story comes a little like this: I made Ulric, and then tried to forcefully fuse my fundamental personality and Ulric together. Either it didn't work, or it did and I became something completely different. Interesting that the apparent affect is one of the complete opposite of Ulric's capabilities, if this were the case. That, or, we really did separate, and he either took various elements of my -self- from me, or I gave them.

Who knows. Perhaps I am Ulric, and the fundamental left. At this point, there's no way for me alone to tell.

This post has been edited by Xenomancer: Jun 10 2009, 01:57 PM

Wow. Intresting story, thanks for sharing.

Your dilemma is probably why I wouldn't go about creating a magical personality although it makes sence for me to do so as its already how I work, basically, starting ritual and becoming ''someone'' diffrent, someone distanced from the nuances of life. At times catch myself telling my self to shut up mid ritual .lol. Creating a distinct identity and endowing it with all that power probably wouldn't do me any good at the moment, enjoy having breakthroughs when the mundane does creep into ritual, tend to resolve issues then, diffrent angle, although it does leave me thinking about how wonderful it is having resolved them rather than focused on the task at hand.

Was hoping people would comment on the use of hypnotherapy/hypnosis in Magick, know theres differing opinion on it... some see it as ''vulgar'' do think they're reffering to stage hypnosis over hypnotherapy though perhaps it would help you reintergrate your identity Xeno? Would say its the best way to go about it, seek a therapist who can take you back to that point in time or generally bring him back out again and enquire as to his dissaperance.

Either that, or conjure him in a triangle. He is my creation. And, because he is immaterial, it is possible to do so, I believe.

Then I can ask him directly.

The idea is to create a persona distinct from ones self for use in magickal workings, using hypnotism to program the mind into assuming said persona when a certain item is put on, gives the example of a ring which is probably best.

For me anyway, the magical self is the host, or core personality. The mundane self is the mask; the constructed alt, produced for the sake of the world. Although, it's also true that the core self changes more than the mask; and that as we make new masks and try them on, we move elements of them back to the core self as well.

This post has been edited by Petrus: Jun 12 2009, 04:38 PM

For me anyway, the magical self is the host, or core personality. The mundane self is the mask; the constructed alt, produced for the sake of the world. Although, it's also true that the core self changes more than the mask; and that as we make new masks and try them on, we move elements of them back to the core self as well.

Then in your words, interpret my case. I'm interested in what you have to say.

Then in your words, interpret my case. I'm interested in what you have to say.

I'd suspect you possibly invested a little too much power into the single personality, Ulric, or more specifically, you associated everything you'd learned or practiced with that one particular mode of thinking.

Chaos in particular recognises the power of modal thinking. You put all your eggs in one basket, in terms of one particular mental mode, and if that basket gets thrown out or lost, all of the eggs go with it. The other thing is that magick a lot of the time can be an almost entirely subjective thing, so if you think you're burnt out, you will be, but then you generally find that it's only because you thought you were.

Giving aspects of yourself names of your own choosing can, IMHO, be a very positive and beneficial practice; I've been doing it myself for years. However, instead of investing everything into that one particular aspect, I would possibly try and maybe distribute certain things around a bit. Also, consciously look at the partitioning you do, and ask yourself what purpose it serves; that way you can have a better idea of what should go where.

Now to the other thing; and this is more important. It sounds like you made some mistakes morally, and didn't live, temporarily, according to your highest ideas about who you are. This happens to me all the time, and I'm sure it probably happens to lots of the rest of us, as well. It's part of being human.

It is true, that as a magician, the stakes are higher because we have more ability in some respects, so when we screw up, there can accordingly be greater consequences. However, even though I still intend to avoid screwing up, from now on, I've recently decided, I'm also going to view it as the opportunity that it is.

Me making developmental or moral mistakes, once I have forgiven myself for them, and rectified them to the best of my ability, more than anything else, gives me an opportunity to work on increasing my level of compassion. The reason why is because, the more mistakes you make, the easier it is to view yourself as being morally on the same level as everyone else, and that is part of the definition of compassion.

So in that sense, when you do the wrong thing, it's actually fantastic, because afterwards you have less logical justification for viewing yourself as being morally superior to others. If you don't see yourself morally as being better than anyone else, that then goes a long way towards eliminating any motivation for judgement.

Truthfully, I've been going through a burnt out period currently myself, where I've been feeling very stressed out and impatient, have been finding magick in any form really difficult, and have also done some things recently which I really wish I hadn't.

However, I'm currently listening to an mp3 I've got here about developing psychic ability, and what it is essentially talking about, is that the very first prerequisite, before anything else, is the removal of fear, and as much as possible, the adoption of unconditional love. From what I'm seeing so far, that's partly about forgiving other people and ceasing to judge them, but it's also equally about forgiving and ceasing to judge ourselves as well, and sometimes forgiving ourselves is more difficult than forgiving anyone else.

As an experiment, if you want Ulric back, I would try to let go of the disgust you felt with what that aspect of yourself did. Look at what the motivation of your actions in that scenario was, and realise that maybe if you'd had a little more information, or had acted with a little more patience, you might have had a much more positive result.

An example; two days ago, I kicked my younger brother's cat, because I had grown tired of his persistent yowling, and the entire family had tried everything we could think of to get him to be quiet. Fortunately, the cat wasn't permanently injured, but he did leave the house for probably three hours. I've spoken to Darkmage here before about disciplining cats before, and we agreed that within limits, corporal punishment was acceptable. What I did on this occasion though, was out of bounds.

For probably the next day and a half, I berated myself for having done it, after having cried when the cat came back into the house. I went to another magic forum site that I know of, and confessed what I had done. There were several women there who were animal lovers, and while they emphasised that they didn't judge me as an individual, they felt that the act in itself was very much wrong. For a while, this just made me feel worse.

In the end though, I had to ask myself; am I eternally damned due to that single act of kicking the cat? The answer to that question is no; I am not.

That is not to say, mind you, that I have carte blanche to arbitrarily boot the cat whenever I feel like it, at all. What it does mean, however, is that there's absolutely nothing that I can do that any of us can conceive of, which, if I make an earnest and genuine resolution to change myself, can permanently prevent me from continuing my development.

Hell is entirely voluntary. You can sit in a pit somewhere, whether mentally or astrally, and decide that what you've done is too awful for anyone to forgive you, and that because of that, you deserve to be in that pit and never be allowed to come out of it; that you've forfeited any right you might have had, to ever be able to move on developmentally from that point. However, the moment you decide yourself to get up, climb out, and move on, you also can. God doesn't put any limitation on our ability to continue to develop, no matter what we do. That's all us.

It's actually possible to figure that out logically as well, by asking yourself this question:- If the system did have built into it, anywhere at all, that there was a single thing that you could do which could get you irretrievably put in a single place forever, then guess where literally everyone would eventually end up?

So you might as well forgive yourself, because apart from anything else, the alternative is boring and pointless. If you've decided that you're burnt out because of what you've done, that means that you're not going to be able to do anything magick related again until you do forgive yourself.

"But Petrus, what I did genuinely was evil!"

Sure. It could well have been. Ask one of the guys in the LHP forum sometime, and they'll possibly tell you that as far as magick is concerned, doing evil stuff is entirely the point, and that it's virtually impossible to have any kind of real fun without it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

The thing you'll notice about them, though; has their development stopped? Do they lose the ability to perform magical acts? It's entirely possible that whatever it is that you've been tying yourself in knots about having done, is just another day at the office for some of them; they probably don't have much of a problem with it at all.

That doesn't mean, mind you, that you should get rid of your current ethical model, or that you don't have it for valid reasons. What it does mean, however, is that the Dark Side demographic, more than anything else, are living, tangible proof that being what we might define as "evil," doesn't cause God (whoever yours is) to cease to love us, and it never causes us to cease to be able to move forward.

So re-examine your ethical model. Ask yourself, "Why was what I did then, against my rules? What were the consequences of it, that I'm having a problem with?" If you can identify the reason why you have the rule, in terms of the consequences it produces, that will go a long way to making sure that you don't break it again...because the next time you're potentially about to, you can remind yourself of the consequences of breaking it, and why said consequences aren't what you want.

Realise, however, ultimately, that you are an eternal being; you can't lose, and neither can anyone else. The most you can do is take actions which, in the moment (and sometimes for a long period afterwards, tho not forever) can cause harmful, painful, or otherwise detrimental consequences for both you and other people. Given enough time, those negative consequences will fade, but that can incur a long delay, and if you're like most of the people doing magick, you're likely doing it because you want your development to happen sooner rather than later. So the point of not committing negative acts isn't because anyone's going to throw you in lava and close a gate behind you which will never, ever be opened. The point of not committing negative acts, is fairly simply that they (temporarily) ultimately only screw up your own development, and while it is always temporary, it can sometimes still mean a heck of a long time.

If you don't want to forgive yourself, yet, that's perfectly fine. You've got eternity to work with, so if you want to devote some time to sadomasochism, by all means, knock yourself out. When you feel like climbing back on the horse and starting again, however, the option will be there. If you resolve not to break that personal (and ultimately, morality is purely personal) rule again, and don't, that will likely mean both an increase in your capacity for compassion, and also an absence of any further negative consequences, which are both going to speed your development.

When you start having rules purely because you know exactly what will happen if you break them, rather than because there's a taboo attached and you'll feel terrible if you do it, is actually when you'll stop breaking your rules, as well. Rules only ever mean anything if they're yours, and you know why you have them. If they're not, and you don't, then you'll break them all the time, because deep down they won't really mean anything.

Hell is entirely voluntary. You can sit in a pit somewhere, whether mentally or astrally, and decide that what you've done is too awful for anyone to forgive you, and that because of that, you deserve to be in that pit and never be allowed to come out of it; that you've forfeited any right you might have had, to ever be able to move on developmentally from that point. However, the moment you decide yourself to get up, climb out, and move on, you also can. God doesn't put any limitation on our ability to continue to develop, no matter what we do. That's all us.

A trappist monk said the same thing. I believe his book was called, "Who told you you were naked?" Or "Who said you were naked?" and the premise of the book is that the damnation of original sin was brought on by humanity's shame in eating the fruit, not in the initial act of disobedience.

Post saved. That was amazing. I'm putting that to "petrus_wisdom.txt" and saving that on my desktop. Bravo!! +1 reputation!

This post has been edited by Xenomancer: Jun 16 2009, 11:32 AM

I don't create another magical identity to do work, but I certainly put myself into a magical state of mind. I use NLP type triggers so that I can quickly go into the right state of mind or perhaps altered state of consciousness. But I don't regard myself as being separate from my normal self or call myself another name. It reminds me of people who give names to their body parts. lol

It reminds me of people who give names to their body parts

Similar to the idea of "Arm," "ear," "eye," "torso," "femural epichondyle," and "corpus collossum?" People do that all the time so that they can cordon off a section of the body that seems to have a different function from the rest to examine it's properties and use better. The hand and the body are one, but is the hand part of the digestive system? No. So, these parts must be differentiated for the sake of understanding the body.

Similarly, giving a name to a "part" of yourself is a way to differentiate such traits and functions of yourself so that you can better analyze your problems.

OK, well I was thinking of a guy who has man boobs he has named Ernie and Bert, but whatever works for you.

W.E Butler writes on allowing the M.personality through into aspects of ones daily life in order to avoid completely segregating it from your commanding everyday personality. Seeing it in action in certain situations where it would prove benificial kind of thing.... once you have a process, a mind state that needs to be reached in order to become effective you have already morphed into your Magical persona, wether or not you decide to name it is another thing.... symbiosis is the word I guess.

As for doing bad or negative things with ones M.Persona, notice that obstacles, fustration tends to be the cause of a person into taking un/nessary action at times.... there is no evil if it serves a purpose a true evil strives to avoid all purpose, Ie; Gods.... so its where it becomes wanton that it becomes an issue. If the cat in question did nothing but meow and drink milk and was abused there you could say a negative aspect of oneself came about to cause the animal grief for its own enjoyment, corrupting your self in the process, in its invocation as it were... if the cat was truely an annoyance then that ''evil'' part of ones self was put to use under the command of a (somewhat) higher sence of self and wouldn't cause the corruption of the untamed negative sence of self, only impacting upon ones guilt which is a human trait if ever there were one. Is all we answer to really.

Would I be wrong in saying that you lost control of your M.Persona Mr Xeno? You say that you were/are disguisted by its actions causing you to close the door on it, wrap it up out of fear or guilt but it should have been under your command at all times and hence unable to act out on its own. If it did something that conflicted with your morals, your sence of self and its given purpose then it was becoming dangerous not just magickally but generally, for your psyche and so on... took to acting out on its own and needed disipline, in that regard just how much to blame are you for its actions and as a child of yours just how much blame can you associate to it?

Would personally question where the driving wheel passed hands and what caused it to take a left in place of a right perhaps.

I use NLP type triggers so that I can quickly go into the right state of mind or perhaps altered state of consciousness[quote]

How do you go about it? Would be intresting to hear how people go about constructing their M.personalities or generally work to distance themselves from themselves for the same kind of reason.

Peace
.M.

there is no evil if it serves a purpose a true evil strives to avoid all purpose

NICE

Would I be wrong in saying that you lost control of your M.Persona Mr Xeno?

This would not be far from the truth at all. Perhaps not a bulls-eye's accuracy of statement, but for sure hits the target area.

Excellent insight. Thank you.

""I use NLP type triggers so that I can quickly go into the right state of mind or perhaps altered state of consciousness[quote]

How do you go about it? Would be intresting to hear how people go about constructing their M.personalities or generally work to distance themselves from themselves for the same kind of reason.

Peace
.M.""


I don't know that it is necessary or desirable to establish a separate personality for the purpose of doing magic. But being able to put yourself into magical mind set, or the level of consiousness from which you can access energy easily and efficiently is certainly desirable.

Now I'm not sure how much people here know about NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming. The principles here are somewhat like the famous conditioned response experiments with Pavlov's dogs. Pavlov conditioned his dogs to associate the sound of a bell with the bringing of food to them. He discovered that eventually even when he didn't bring the dogs food when he rang the bell, the dogs would salivate as their bodies readied themselves to eat.

Anthony Robbins, the 6 ft 7 inch motivational speaker is actually teaching a simplified form of NLP. His books are easily available, or you could find various NLP books at the library.

Similarly to Pavlov, we can condition our minds to associate doing a magic ritual with a trigger event. The trigger could be a bell I suppose. Tony Robbins suggests squeezing your fist while visualizing an event associated with the mood you wish to go into. It should be something you could do easily an adopt as part of a preparation routine before doing ritual. I'm British Traditional Wiccan, so I am familiar with it's practices. Part of the reason why we work skyclad, or ritually nude, is because we almost automatically go into the magical mindset when we doff our cloths. Yes I do get naked under other circumstances, but I seldom walk around naked in front of a group of mixed people. So it is something that I only associate with coven work. Therefore it is a good trigger to move me into the magical mindset. It could as easily be putting on ritual robes or having a ritual bath before doing ritual. The more you use it regularly, the more your subconscious links the trigger with the desired mindset.

NLP has more to it than just triggers. It is a rich and potentially useful set of tools for anyone, including burgeoning young (or middle aged) magic workers. The courses that you can take are useful, but very expensive. However as I mentioned, there are a lot of NLP books on the market.

Only recently bought a book on N.L.P, cites people like Ericsson being the main character behind it all. Confused as to the 'diffrence' between hypnosis and NLP though, NLP seems to be much shallower than hypnosis you're not going into trance and (re) programming yourself to behave in a certain way when a trigger or suggestion is given you're simply programming behaviour through repitition... understand that hypnotism is Neuro Linguistic Programming but taking it as a technique on its own seems a bit borrowsome... bit close to call if you see my point.