When I first began my study of

magick, almost thirty years ago, I was fascinated and bewildered by the

numerous, often conflicting, systems for cataloging entities. Every school of

thought and every religion offered a pantheon of entities, avatars, teachers,

and earthly representatives. There were catalogs filled with icons, pantheons

crowded with gods and goddesses, angels organized in hierarchies more complex

than government offices, and demons lined up behind their bigger,

badder brethren. Even the most ostensibly monotheistic religions still had

lists of saints, prophets, teachers, legendary characters, and further subdivisions

of their One True, yet nonetheless divisible, God.

All these systems were fascinating,

of course, and I spent many days, weeks, months and years focused upon exploring them. I studied

Jungs Man and His Symbols, pored

over Crowleys 777, spread tarot

cards on my living room floor, tossed coins among the piles of tarot cards, and

created magic marker enneagrams, veves, and hieroglyphs. I soon found that a

few of these entities had the ability to affect me in surprising ways. Some I

found I was inexplicably drawn to  I wrote short stories and created tarot

cards for the god Pan for many years, performed rituals involving Aleister

Crowleys triumvirate of Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit and placed candy, rum and cigars on altars for

Voodoo loas, for instance. Similarly some entities repelled me–although most simply did

not touch me in any immediately significant way. But ultimately my question

about all of these was, Why this

stuff? The teaching was that these entities were symbols, archetypes from the

collective unconscious–from a Platonic dreamworld in which the proper

shapes of all things were stored.

I'm fine with the idea that our unconscious minds intersect someplace and that

we share the common implicit information that is the world beyond our immediate

awareness. It makes sense to me on a very practical level  that everything in

the universe influences everything else, no matter how slightly or

significantly and that information about everything is available everywhere,

if we have the ability to decode it. That still doesnt offer an answer as to how

we came up with this particular stuff from among all the potential

shapes and forms, gods, angels, demons and symbols of the unperceived world.

What is it about that memetic complex that we call a god that makes it a god?

How was this stuff first derived? I wanted to understand the

nature of the gods and goddesses from books and esoteric lore that I had come

to love  ultimately, I wanted to find a pantheon within my own life and experience.

After some years of contemplating

this issue of the origin of archetypes, I decided that the emphasis on the

"stuff" was only half the equation. The stuff  the names, shapes, clothing and

bedroom habits of the gods  represents the content, the collection of ideas

and perceptions that we circle in a metaphysical Venn diagram to delineate

exactly what constitutes a particular entity. The answer to my question lay as

much within the circle as in the hand that pushes the pen to draw it  or rather in the mind

that guides that hand.

The question became, What is

it about a particular collection of stuff

that fires off the part of my brain that recognizes it as something

meaningful? What makes the character of Ganesh recognizable to worshipers as a

god, for instance? Its a more complex question than it might appear on the

surface.

The first level to be peeled back

deals with how we recognize anything as conscious, as something with which we

can communicate. An intuitive Turing Test performed by the

unconsciousness mind seems to immediately categorize things into conscious

entity and inanimate lump. We look at each other and, hopefully, we

recognize one another as human and conscious and at least reasonably intelligent.

Some very simple visual patterns, for instance, seem to fire off this sense of

recognition  a smiley face, have-a-nice day symbol is recognizable to us as a

human face; a South Park cartoon character can be identified with–for a half hour at a time–as a conscious entity with the ability to communicate,

make decisions, and act– however stupidly–upon the world.

Linguistic patterns

also seem to have a similar ability to reveal the conscious state of an entity. A sentence formed with proper syntax

suggests that its writer or speaker is possessed of some measure of

intelligence. Based on such unconscious intuitions, we recognize writers

as conscious entities when we read their well-formed sentences. We recognize other

humans as such when we communicate with each other in text environments such as

Internet forums. And we even recognize fictional characters as entities for

whom we might predict behavior and sympathize. (What would Captain Kirk do?)

There are many behavioral patterns and cues that help us to,

unconsciously, tell the difference between a conscious entity and a brick of

cheese.

This all made much more sense to me

when I came across the concept of mirror

neurons. These are

physical structures in the brain which enable us to build predictive models of

intelligence or consciousness. In effect, mirror neurons build models of entities

and use our own consciousness as computing power to run those models. We look

at another person and we a) recognize them as another person, and b) try them

on for size to some degree. This suggests that mirror neurons are not only the

operative force behind empathy, sympathy, and most forms of communication, but

may also explain some of the phenomena involving gods and demons with which I

was struggling to understand.

First, lets demonstrate how mirror

neurons work. The following exercises are excerpted from the Meta-Magick Invocation Workdbook (© 2008 Philip H. Farber, used with permission).

Watch Yourself Relax:

Imagine that

you can see yourself, or hear yourself, or feel yourself, as if observing

another person . Make it like looking at a movie or a picture of yourself.

If you are better at hearing or feeling, then hear yourself talking or

making sounds, or feel where your presence would be.

Imagine that

this other self that you are observing is in a place that is very

comfortable and very, very relaxing . Its not necessary to see, hear

or feel the place, just keep your attention on this other self.

Watch, listen,

and/or feel as this other self becomes more and more relaxed , more and

more comfortable, and exhibits the effects of relaxation: softer muscles,

different posture, different facial expression, and so forth.

Make changes

to the structure of the image (but not the content):

Make the image larger or smaller Make the colors brighter or more muted Emphasize the foreground as opposed to the

background, and vice versa Make the sounds or speech louder or quieter (if the

emphasis is on hearing rather than seeing) Speed up and slow down the action (works for all

senses) Move the image closer or farther away (works for

all senses) Give the image a soft glow or sparkles

Notice any

changes to your state as you experiment with these changes.

The above exercise deals not

just with our ability to recognize entity-hood in our dealings with external stuff,

but also with the things that we imagine, the dissociated images and entities

that we create in our minds. The very (im)material that gods, demons, and

imaginary friends are made from. Also notice how subtle changes in the form and

quality of our internal image have the ability to change our response to the

entity. Different configurations affect our consciousness in different ways.

Making the representation larger or smaller, brighter or dimmer, etc., will

often continue the process of making us more or less relaxed. Hopefully you

found a configuration that was wonderfully relaxing.

Although the above excersise was about our self-image, it gives us a start towards finding clues

to the anatomy of entities of any kind. And even better, we may notice some

direct connections between the anatomy of an entity and our own states of

consciousness.

Lets consider for a moment our

criteria for recognizing something as god or goddess, demon or angel. There are,

generally, two major magical operations that involve these critters: invocation and evocation. Invocation is the drawing into oneself of a quality or

entity; evocation is the externalization of a quality or entity. In a

traditional invocation of Hermes, we might visit a temple of Hermes and

contemplate his image, or recite a descriptive poem in his honor, or create a

magick circle and bring into it only those things of Hermetic nature, so that

we might become more Hermetic ourselves. In a traditional evocation we might

summon a Goetic spirit into a triangle and question it about what would make

life better for us or constrain it to perform some task for us to that same

end. We perform these operations quite naturally in daily life, outside the

context of magick or mysticism. When we are inspired by another person or a

work of art, that is a kind of invocation. When we imagine conversations with

people who arent present, or attempt to verbally convince our computer

connection to go faster, we are engaging in mild forms of evocation.

Lets say that, for the purposes of

this discussion, our entities become useful when we can use them to perform invocation

and evocation willfully and with well-defined intent. An entity suitable for

invocation could, ideally, change you in some desired way by contemplating the

entity and drawing it into yourself. An entity suitable for evocation would be

able to impart information or perform tasks according to your will. In our

Meta-Magical explorations, we hope to discover entities in relation to our own

states and our consciousness, rather than necessarily learning some previous

explorers version of a pantheon. (And when we all do this, perhaps well find

that we have many of these entities in common.)

As in the preceding exercise, we

begin with an image of the self. Our hypothesis here is that a self image is

the very essence of entity-recognition. It is our basic reference point for

consciousness and can also help to reveal our own innate pantheons, the

entities who already inhabit our world of consciousness. To change that image

from our human self to that of a god, we have to tweak the parameters in order

for that image (or voice or feeling) to rise to the level of something useful

in invocation or evocation, something with the potential to change us through

interaction.

Instant God(dess):

Decide on a

quality that you either have and would like to enhance, or one that

you dont have and would like to acquire. For instance, creativity,

compassion, patience, strength, assertiveness, financial skill,

adaptability, understanding, concentration, flexibility, love, sex appeal,

or whatever you decide upon. Make sure this quality is a positive one,

that is, it is one that stands on its own and is not expressed as a lack

of something else (for instance, reduced stress might be expressed here

as relaxation, no more bad luck might be expressed for these purposes

as good luck and so on).

Breathe and

banish. Imagine a circle around yourself, at about the diameter of

your spread arms. Sit or stand in the center of that circle. Fill your

lungs completely, with a slow, even inhalation. As you inhale, allow your

attention to expand to fill the circle. As you exhale, slowly, evenly, and

completely, allow your attention to contract to a single point in the

center of your chest. Repeat at least three times.

Create a

dissociated image of yourself (an image, voice or feeling of you as if

perceived by another person or in a recording), standing or sitting.

Eliminate background and any accessories, objects, props, and so on that

might be in your image, so that the image is just you.

Begin to

adjust the physiology of the imagined person to include more and more

of your desired quality. Pay attention to and adjust facial expression,

posture, breathing, movements, skin tone, muscle usage and anything else

that might pertain.

Adjust the

structure of the image (submodalities) for greater impact. Experiment

with image size, color depth and quality, image location, and special

effects such as glows, sparkles, shimmers. Take each of these to its

greatest intensity  for instance, the image could be increased to much

greater than life-size. If this image were a god of that particular

quality, how would these submodalities manifest? Just how big, bright,

loud, strong and sparkly is a god(dess) of x?

Begin to add

in extra features and aspects from other humans, from animals,

machines as appropriate to a god(dess) of this quality. For instance, if

cunning and strength are useful to this entity, give it some qualities of

a tiger or other animal that might represent those qualities (head, body,

teeth, eyes, whatever). If enhanced intelligence or processing speed is

important, then maybe a computer chip or having a computer as an accessory

might work. Take as much time as is necessary to test out some of these

qualities. Notice which ones feel the best and keep them. Have fun with

this and make your image fantastic.

Adjust

physiology to account for the additions. If you added a computer chip

to the brain, how would that be reflected in facial expression, breathing,

posture, etc.?

Contemplate

the image for at least 30 seconds. Pull the image

into the circle with you and draw it into you. Wear it like clothing,

wrap it around you, let it interpenetrate your body and mind. Let your own

body, posture, breathing, facial expression, etc. reflect what you saw in

this image. Let the memories of this (future) self who has already

resolved this basic need be your memories. Breathe and

banish . Be open to

thoughts, epiphanies, and suggestions from your unconscious mind that

may occur throughout the day as a result of this practice.



This exercise and the early one are offered

here for demonstration purposes, to give some practical experience of the

relationship between entities and consciousness. For the most part, entities

produced or contacted in this way are personal ones, not necessarily god or

goddess archetypes familiar to us from the astral storehouse of sacred images.

However, sometimes they do rise to that level and first-time practitioners

occasionally find themselves face-to-face with deities who offer names and

abilities drawn from known pantheons and belief systems.

The exercises demonstrate an extremely stripped-down and basic mode of working. There are

endless modifications and enhancements to these processes of deriving personal

pantheons from our unconscious minds. At some point, they become much more than

simple demonstrations of a point  but Ill leave that, for now, to your own

imagination and experience…



(…And before youre off to read the

next article, Ill just note that to fully understand the point that this piece

dances around, no matter how well you think you get it on an intellectual

level, it is most likely necessary to actually perform the experiments. You

have to look through the microscope and adjust the focus before you really know

what a micro-organism is like. And it likewise helps to change the focus of

your mind before you really understand the nature of the entities all around us,

including gods, goddesses, demons, angels, imaginary friends, ideologies,

corporations, schools of art, mass movements and those mysterious bipeds we

call human.)