QUOTE(Green Lantern @ Feb 28 2013, 04:18 AM)
Greetings
Has anyone ever built a mental temple and conducted magick from it?
A while back I made a mandala that symbolically represents my understanding of magick, and soon realized that its a perfect floor plan for a mental temple. This got me wondering if I can do magick within it using my mental body, while physically I might be laying in my bed, preferably in a trance. Can magick be effective this way, even though I'm physically inactive? Also, do I visualize myself in the first or third person? This may sound like a silly question, but some hypnotherapists advise using the third person for any visualization, saying its better somehow. The only reason I've been able to find why this may be so is that when visualizing in the third person, your emotions are dissociated from what you are seeing, while in first person you may elicit stronger emotions, including the 'lust of result'.
I would appreciate any advice.
It is completely possible to do every type magick in this way. There was a person on the forums a few years back who did all his magick mentally and in dreams. It is all a mater of focus and clarity, though. Physical props are helpful because they act a place holders for energy so the mage need not bother so much with direct awareness of ever energy at play and what they are doing and relating to each other. Magick in purely mental space requires the ability to maintain awareness on every energy and what it is doing for the duration one needs them. Some people use visualized props to stand in for real ones. This makes it a little easier, but does not free one form keeping everything in awareness. If you make a thought form of the prop in the same way you would create a servitor then it will continue to persist and carryout its function even if you stop being aware of it.
The only issue I have with laying down it that one is prone to fall asleep and thus rune the work. Sitting in a chair or in some Asana which is fully supportive and comfortable is best. Third or first person is not that important. Over time the distinction between the two gives way to awareness in both perspectives at the same time. If third person gives you some mental detachment then all the better - yet I watch my students play on their smart phones and see how emotional they get over those games. The ability to be disassociated or unattached to something is a faculty that is cultivated independent of any working.
With regrades to your mandala temple, you could search for astral temples as they are effectively the same thing. The way you construct it weather it is persistent or temporary are points discussed there in.