"there is no magic"
- Pug, Krondor, the Betrayal
I think I've realized that, just like Pug the magician, there is no magic. In Raymond Feist's fantasy series, the Riftwar Saga, a young magician named Pug struggles with a path of magic called the Lesser Path. He's not very good at it and accepts his fate as a mediocre wizard. Later, he's taken as a slave to another world and eventually is trained in another form of magic, one that he's quite adept at. The story continues and farther into the trilogy, he finds himself in a situation where his magic is countered. Through pain and anguish, his mind breaks down a barrier and he finds that he suddenly gains great insight into the Lesser Path and he frees himself. He goes on to learn other forms of magic but his ultimate revelation occurs when he meditates on the core Truth of Magic. Everytime, he pulls back a layer of dogma and ritual, he finds another layer underneath and he realizes that, like an onion, magic is nothing but layers. He could pierce its secrets forever and never find Truth.
Perhaps Feist did a little research into Chaos Magic because this is one of its core concepts. There is no magic. Practitioners of Kundalini Yoga attempt to awaken their chakra, or energy centers, so that primal energy will flow up the spine and out through the skull. In Taoist Chi Kung, the energy originates in the belly and its circulated up the spine and then down the front, back to the belly. In the Middle Pillar, energy is brought down from the heavens, piercing the skull and flowing down to the feet where it rises back up to the skull, like an upside-down waterfall. Yoga describes 7 chakras, Chi Gung has 14 main energy centers, and Western Mystery Tradition claims 5 power centers, is there any truth to energy work? Yoga claims that chakras are organs of the aura. Chi Gung practitioners believe that the energy centers are focussed on nerve clusters. Western Mystery Tradition demonstrates that the 5 power centers align with the Tree of Life on a microcosmic scale. Who's right? Who's wrong? Perhaps, they're all right and they're all wrong.
Archangels and Archetypes, Circuits of the Brain and Peak Experiences, science and religion; perhaps none of it truly matters. Robert Anton Wilson once said, "The map is not the territory." That quote didn't mean much to me until a camping trip during which my friends and I planned to hike 14km a day but swiftly realized that 14km on the map is not 14km in real life. A map can't account for terrain, variations in elevation, unused trails and a 50lb backpack. In the same fashion, we can discuss that spirits are merely functions of the subconscious or how gods really are their own beings and not just archetypes but we can't truly know. All we can truly know is what brings results and how we incorporate those discoveries into our own lives.
From my end of things, I harboured a major doubt. While I practiced Chi Kung, I remembered the words of Dion Fortune. Eastern methods for eastern bodies and western methods for western bodies, How could I as a westerner of Celtic descent possibly expect to succeed at the traditions of ancient China? Needless to say, I left Taoism behind but now, I wonder. Aleister Crowley believed that a true adept must master both magic and yoga... a method of bringing the divine into the mundane and a method of raising the mundane toward the divine. If 'Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted' and we can only follow the map and keep notes of our adventures then for me, perhaps it's time to mix Chi Kung with Sorcery... the Yoga with the Magic. Clean your temple and your rites will be the stronger for it.
