The Time for Magic
A major focus of Samuel’s work through the years has been to encourage humanity to uncover and make practical use of its power. It is only by developing and using what is latent within us that we can take full control of (and responsibility for) our lives. As those who have attended his recent workshops are aware, Samuel has begun teaching technologies which make use of physical objects as symbols for spiritual qualities such as wisdom, mercy and grace. He has shown how these objects, in combination with visualization, become tools to focus power and enable us to work in the non-physical planes to manifest situations in our physical experience. In other words, he has been teaching the practice of magic. (This brand of magic has nothing to do with power over others; its sole concern is with raising one’s own spiritual vibrations by forming a more conscious connection with deeper levels of the self.) Samuel’s work in 1995 will continue to develop this theme, and so we asked him to review some of the basics about magic as he would have us understand it.
First you must forget everything that you’ve learned about magic as pulling the rabbit out of the hat, as illusion—or about magical powers being bestowed on you by a superior being. Both of those ideas have to do with people putting their power outside of themselves, as if to say, “It’s a technique that David Copperfield does; it’s not available to me,” or “That’s a gift that my fairy godmother gave me.” Those attitudes are inaccurate.
Magic isn’t the “what you’re doing.” It’s the attitude that lets you do it. Magic is how you see. In the big picture, magic is perspective—spiritualized perspective, specifically. In the small picture, it’s your ability to see the miracle in the mundane. One of the technologies that makes magic work is your simply saying “I have the ability to see the magic in all things.” That gives you a new perspective.
Meaning a perspective bigger than the laws of physics.
Yes. Most of magic is well within the laws of your planet, of which physics is a part. Most of the time, experiencing magic happens because you stopped your hold—for just an instant—on the way your mind thinks things are set up.
There are natural laws of the planet which your science at this time either hasn’t yet discovered or is wrong about and will soon correct. Science in its purest form is art—most of your scientists will tell you that—and that’s the magic of it. Mathematics in its purest form is art; that’s the magic of it. To get to know something so well that you begin to see the Pure Beauty of it means that you have perceived magic. It just so happens that once you have the ability to perceive it, you’re going to be seeing it all the time, and therefore becoming able to use it. So it’s a closed loop situation, and one of the best things you can do to make it useful to you is to accept that you’re living in a world that is very much more than you’re able to perceive. Accept that there is practically nothing set [in concrete], there is no final proof about a thing. The ability always to be open to a different why and when opens the door to magic.
We tend to define magic as anything that is “impossible,” and as soon as we see how and why it’s possible, it’s no longer magic.
That’s the perspective I’m talking about. Think about your history. There are people who were burned at the stake for believing that the earth was round. They were in league with the devil; they were “magicians.” Of course, chemists—or alchemists—were often considered magicians. Nowadays they’re considered underpaid researchers. Blacksmiths were considered absolutely the greatest of magicians; look at what sort of magic was involved in making steel. And everybody knows the magic that was put into a good weapon.
Throughout history, the world has seen the magician as one who could do what was thought impossible. But as your society is changing more and more, and the impossible is becoming commonplace, the idea is growing that magic is impossible; there is no such thing. That’s the step you’re at right now.
But the next step is to see magic in its truest sense, as the ability to use that which is around you—perhaps in ways that it has not been used thus far, perhaps in slightly different combinations—to bring you a result you desire. Because it’s not the “what you do,” it’s the “what you see.”
Have you ever heard of the monkeys that paint “great” works of art? Someone put a large canvas in a room with a chimpanzee and gave it paint. The monkey probably did not have a vision of what it was doing; it was just enjoying its moment. It created something that others were able to enjoy, also, but there was no magic.
A beautiful piece of art is probably not done by the artist taking paint and throwing it at the canvas. The art that has lasted through the ages is that which was created when the artist’s vision became transferred to the canvas. The artist may have been looking out over a valley that everyone could see, but the artist processed it differently—it’s not the physical vision, but the heart’s vision, that allows the magician today to take that next step. It’s the difference between painting a [representation of a] hill and the artist catching the light and shadow and the interplay, so that when you look at it you see the life of that hill. That’s the magic I’m talking about.
And ultimately, what is that magic for? One purpose: I am doing what I can to pull magic out of those with whom I’m working because it is a tool for putting the vision of your higher self onto the canvas of this planet. As an artist standing on a hillside looks into the valley and puts that on a canvas, so this artist is your higher self, putting your life in form onto canvas. It’s that higher vision that lets you live a holy life. But the only way for the entity to work through to that higher self is by magic.
Magic is a tool, magic is a way of seeing, all of it designed to allow you to manifest your entity in synthesis in this world. Individuated synthesis is the magical process whereby you and your entity are one.
Now, what does carving candles or making symbol stones have to do with that? In the process of individuated synthesis that is available to those who have been working on a spiritual pathway for a long time—and therefore are working at higher levels of vibration—there is a huge physical response which is taking place. All those things which are outgrowths of you—such as your car, your relationships, your health, even your dog—are now saying, “What about me?” All of these things are parts of the physical essence in individuals who are working in higher levels, and that physical also needs to reach transition now. That transition is a movement from a purely physical-world, first-level understanding to a spiritualized physical understanding: magic eyes.
Therefore, [as you manipulate symbolic objects] with the conscious thought, I am doing physical activity, making these things, doing this ritual with my physical hands and brain, putting all of this together as a means of spiritual work, you are allowing the physical to act out its spiritual nature, a nature which it has but has never before been able to express.
Now it’s time; in fact it’s beyond time. And if the physical does not have the opportunity to act out its spiritual nature, it’s going to start screaming about being left behind. And it screams by making you sick, by your machinery breaking down—you begin to experience chaos.
The process of spiritual growth is circular. The first time around the circle—at the beginning of the awakening process—I don’t encourage you to do rituals with candles and representations of the elements and such, because it becomes a detour for so many. What I do instead is suggest, when people first awaken, that they begin immediately working on meditation and sitting—specific practices to help them get into higher levels of consciousness, to become conscious. Wear a rubber band around your wrist and pop it every time you have a negative thought, or wear your watch on the other wrist so that every time you catch yourself looking the other way you can send energy and love to the world. There are lots of ways to raise consciousness to a level of spirit.
But once that’s done, once you’re at that level of ascension and working in consciousness and toward synthesis, something else begins to happen. As you come around the circle once more, all of a sudden you start dealing with physical issues again—not physical issues such as, Am I going to go to the store tomorrow? Well, let me sit down and use the Ouija Board and find out. That’s a waste of time. At this point, not even such issues as, When I meditate can I clear my mind? In fact, by this time your meditations have probably become rather boring, and you’re moving on into extremely active and high level work, hopefully, like the pillar work, in which you’re actually creating a life and an internal spiritual substance that’s able to have a good connection to spirit (the right pillar). You’re able to go way beyond the early techniques. You’re ready for something else—and all of a sudden your house starts falling apart again! Your car starts breaking down! You’re not feeling good again. All of these things that you thought you’d already moved beyond.
You find yourself complaining: Why is my physical self hollering at me again? I thought I’d learned how to give it what it needs, how to comfort and love it. I thought I’d already worked through its inner child and what it needs. But this time around the circle, it’s not the inner child anymore—it’s the inner priest that’s needing to be heard and needing to be let out. It’s no longer those problems of the lower level, although the symptoms are the same. Now it’s time for the physical to be raised up—literally. And that does not mean doing spiritual things on a physical level, which is what I’ve been teaching up until recently. It means doing physical things on a spiritual level. Therefore, create an altar—spiritual things on a physical level. And then work on it—the physical thing on a spiritual level—to create what you want.
Would it help to see this magical work in terms of the Seventh Ray, Ceremonial Magic and Ritual?
Not really. What I want you to look at now is how to make every physical thing you do an act of godliness, rather than every godly thing you do—which is what the Rays are—an act of humanness. The Rays are spirit working in form, and we want form working in spirit.
[The confusion between the form learning to be spiritual and the spirit learning to work in form] is very much what has thrown humanity off for so very long. Humanity’s idea is to teach the physical to be spiritual, and they wonder why it’s so hard; but that’s backward—first you teach the spirit how to be physical, because that’s really what runs you—that’s the gasoline for the engine. Then you teach the physical how to catch up, because then it has a whole new ability to catch up. It has been spiritualized, and so it can work beyond the physical now.
