The Power to be a Magician

Magicians are a rare breed. I personally think they're the equivalent of Iamblichus' "Hero" classification of entities. That makes us like Hercules, half immortal and half mortal.

I base this on the Corpus Hermeticum's Divine Pymander, where it talks about the reason Man became flesh, and the nature of Man. Iamblichus would have been familiar, I suspect, of this basic Hermetic belief, writing as he did in Egypt in the neoplatonic period. Man is the Image of the First Father, and is an immortal on par with the Logos in the original hierarchy. Man wanders down through the spheres, pokes his head into Nature, sees a reflection of himself and falls in love. Next thing you know, Nature's created an image of the reflection, because She's in Love with Man's image too. Both can be excused for their infatuation when it is understood that Man was the Image of the First Father. Man cohabits the image made by Nature, and voila, Humankind is created, immortal by being of divine race, mortal in form, and all for the sake of love.

Isn't it romantic?

So we're Heroes. Now obviously, we aren't going around with the strength of the Gods, going on fateful quests, and creating a new cycle of myths for the next generation to evaluate and draw insight from, are we?

Well, honestly, we are. Magicians have the strength of the Gods. We are the image of God, and are aware of "their" divine race. We accomplish creation in an ongoing process that follows God's path of manifestation, through Word and spirits, to accomplish the manifestation of our thoughts.

We go on fateful quests. We work with certain spirits, and the next thing you know you're surrounded by opportunities to implement the experience you've gained. The fates align our reality to accomplish specific goals.

And the new cycle of myths? How many people have poured over Crowley's life, gaining insight and inspiration? Dione Fortune, Mathers, Westcott, Regardie, and the more obscure members of the GD left diaries and records of their Works that have provided our generation of magicians with wisdom and clues to finding our own paths of gnosis. We are currently Working in a time that will become poured over by the next generation of magicians. This Traditional Magic revival we're going through is going to be a page in occult history that feeds the next big movement in thirty years.

Not everyone who happens to be human is a magician. I've had people ask me whether talent or skill is more important, and I've answered both ways and neither in the past. Right now I think everyone can develop the talent, but not everyone is destined to do so. Skill comes with experience, experience comes from being called to the occult, which means you have to have the talent to hear and respond, so it's all pretty incestuous. I think I can get away with saying usually the talent is present before the skills are developed, but both talent and skill increase with practice. They are interdependent on one another.

The Power of a Magician comes from their relationship with the First Father. Being made in his image, we can do "magic" the same way he can. Our thoughts become reality. We can create. We converse with the Angels and Daimons and other Heroes, and we work together to make things happen. It is from our divine nature that the power to be a magician flows.