When last I updated here, my under-research "Integral Magick" book, Scientia, Magica, Mystica, was already three years in the works. I'd had high hopes that within the year I would have the working outline and be in the process of writing. That was two years ago.

A great part of the problem is that I bit off more than I could chew, and it's only just now reaching the end of the primary research stage. End result? Three twelve-gallon crates full of books for my primary sources. It's gone a few directions I certainly didn't expect.

I also got stalled out working on it with this last phase of my wine career, which had me tied up mostly with work and sleep for the past fifteen months. But that's been time for the book to percolate and correlate. I've landed at the Blue House in the Rockies now, and have my writer's den under renovation. (The Great Divide looms beyond the back deck, and for the first time in my life I'm living east of it.) I imagine, holed up during the winter storms on the mountain this winter, I'll get a lot of writing done.

As I start to assemble online what notes I have collected in the latest notebooks, it will all start showing up here again.

Ah, one of the real reasons I'm writing a book on magick: so I can explain to the rest of the world just what the heck it is that I do in magick. I'm working on my pre-writing for the integral magick book. As such, I first need to touch on the perrenial states and their conscious navigation. I do this by examining the theoretical foundation of the Perrenial Philosophy and its corresponding Perrenial States with a practicum of liminal yoga and lucid dreaming based upon that theoretical foundation.

( Theory )
( Practicum )

Further topics for expansion and extension from here:

• Expansion of brief ideas covered in the manifestation of the three realms
  
• Tips and tricks for controlling lucid dreams
  
• Finding a balance between control and flow ("Path of Will" vs. "Path of Surrender") when using these practices
  
• Extending the skills gained at navigating the liminal margin to navigating the abyssal margin
  
• Developing skills to bypass the normal flows between the perrenial states; e.g. moving directly from Waking to Deep Sleep such as by formless meditation, magick, or the targeted use of entheogens
  
• Using these skills in both results-oriented magick and in self-transformation
  
• Extending these skills into the development of a more complete Witness awareness (turiya)
  
• Anything people ask me about related to this (until which point I'll keep happily babbling away about what I only think people might be interested in)
  

I'm out of writing time today. More later.

In my various ramblings online, I have often commented on the large number of notebooks I am using to track, sort, and develop the primary ideas of the integral magick model. A large portion of my notebooking efforts for the past weeks has been in developing working drafts of my major supporting diagrams and the finalized set of symbols for use within logick (the diagramming system I use for the model). Because much of my writing is dependent upon these visual aides, I'm now scanning them in (in the rough) so that I may reference them later on as I write more "position paper" type pieces for the integral magick model.

If you want to take a look at them before that, though, I have posted several of the key ones to my notebooks gallery. I don't suspect they will make full sense on their own without the supporting philosophy, but I've done my best to include (usually) short descriptions of them. As always, comments or questions are welcome, but for these I may defer answers for further position papers based on them.

Someone emailed me a few weeks back with some questions regarding Wilber's model, it's conflict with occult worldviews, and the reconciliation of the two. The response was well worth sharing, as this is something I've been working towards writing anyway as I stuggle with the early chapters of my book. I imagine that I'll use some of this as rough material for more polished and better-supported thought in the book. For now, this is a good summary of my views.

---

Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 21:18:32 -0700
From: "Fenwick Kaidevis Rysen" <kaidevis@gmail.com>
To: (cut)
Subject: Re: Integral Magick

On 6/1/06, (cut) wrote:
> I used to study and pratice with the HOGD until I discovered Ken Wilber.
> Then I intepreted magick through his lens as some kind of retroromantic
> regression to a pre-rational worldview. I see that you are informed by
> Wilber's work yet maintain the magickal worldview. I'm trying to reconcile
> the two and see you are working on a project called integral magick. Can you
> direct me to your written works on how you manage this? Thanks.

( My response was moderately long... )

Help?

I'm finalizing the writing outline for my chapter on "Levels of Manifestation," and I need help finalizing my terminology. I could simply borrow all the spiffy yogic terminology in Sanskrit for all of this, but that would (severely!) defeat the self-stated purpose of a common magicolinguistics within the Integral Magickal Model.

In discussing nonduality (causal realm) and duality (subtle+physical realms) and the experience of crossing them (through the Abyssal Margin between causal and subtle realms) the main subjective characteristic in passing through the Abyss is the assumption of ego (involutionary/descending current causal-->subtle) and the dissolution of ego (evolutionary/ascending current subtle-->causal).¹

I'm trying to come up with simple, sensible, one-word phrases for these two processes. I've currently reduced them to the working-model 2-word phrases, above. (Which I may yet stick with if they ultimately prove to be the most weildly.)

"Egogenesis" is my current handle word for the involutionary aspect, of descending through the Abyss and assuming one's ego (sense of self/identity).

However, I have no corresponding word for the dissolution of ego. Perhaps something with the same format, "ego-" suffixed with a Latin or Greek word/root/stem meaning something along the lines of "destruction/dissolution/removal/shedding." Or maybe something else entirely.

I'm not entirely fixed on "egogenesis" either, if anyone has other suggestions. Because technically I don't see it as a genesis -- ego is not created, ego is assumed as an affectation layered over the higher self. If I could convery that in a single word, I'd be thrilled to death.

Alternate 2-word versions welcomed as well, if they help convey more of the entire picture.

Comments desired, questions answered, discussions welcomed.


¹ If that made no immediate sense, reference the Three Realms diagram.

The "Three Realms" diagram central to the Integral Magick Model, showing major correspondences. This is still evolving as the book does.

( Tucked back here... )
Last updated 2006.04.23

Last night I picked my copy of Arthur Versluis' The Philosophy of Magic (Boston: 1986) off of the shelf. I needed some variety, having burnt out on my current research material. I picked this book up on the cheapo used rack at Green Apple Books in San Francisco a few years ago, and, though I remember being excited about it after thumbing through it, it's been one of those books that got shuffled aside amidst other piles.

I remember why I was so excited about it now. I stayed up a good six hours past bedtime: reading, highlighting, checking against my notebooks. Sucked me right in.

Versluis essentially covers much of the same ground that I wish to: From the foundation of a three-realms model (Physical/Subtle/Causal) and its relationship to Form (Eidos) and Mind (Nous). He sees magick as being a subtle-realm art that serves as a bridge of understanding between the Physical to the Causal, and begins with an examination of the currents of spiritual involution (manifestation/immanentization of Form from Mind) and spiritual evolution (transcendence of Form back into Mind). He also makes an examination of various magickal psychocosms within the western Hermetic tradition while also giving enough context to link them to psychocosms within other spiritual systems of realization. He sees magick not as an end in and of itself, but as one part of an ongoing spiritual evolution encountered by anyone on that path whether as "magick or miracles." As he says in the preface, "In this study we approach magic and alchemy in their highest manifestations as byproducts or aspects of spiritual discipline."

It's very exciting to read a book about magick at a spiritual level rather than a procedural or physical-results-oriented form. He focuses on the high-level "behind the scenes" aspects of what magick is and does, where it fits into other traditions and how they enhance each other as a whole, and how it can be used as a tool for spiritual realization.

This morning I was reading more and found myself completely blown away when, in half a paragraph, he hits all the main points (Perrenial States & Three Realms, Spiritual Involution, Spiritual Evolution) that I plan to expound in my first two chapters on States and Currents. He begins his first chapter with an examination of the Poimandres within the Corpus Hermeticum, after which he writes:

"In this first section of the Corpus Hermeticum, then, we have a remarkably condensed version of the traditional three-world cosmology which is to be found in Neoplatonic teachings, in Gnostic Christian writings, in Qabalistic Judaism, in Islamic Sufism, in Taoism and in esoteric Buddhism, varying with each tradition. There is the realm of the Ideal [Causal], the celestials, the realm of the planets [Subtle], and the realm of samsara [Physical], of birth and death. The soul descends through these [Spiritual Involution] and then, when it is properly matured, disciplined, and enlightened, it 'ascends' [Spiritual Evolution] towards mind again, that which is beyond conception." --pp. 12

It's quite dense with quotable material. ( Further quotes )

"Some years ago I myself made some observations on this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print. One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite discarded. How to regard them is the question,--for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness."

--William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902