Everyone here has an activated double, so I will dispense with the mundane use of magic. The primary use of magic is to draw our double closer, to eventually merge the two sides of our being.
There are two main applications of magic that I want to speak of here:
1. applying the power of our double to physical actions, to enhance those actions,
2. applying our physical body/world to the actions of our double.
Just keep in mind the first step in all magic. Stop and ask yourself how do you feel if what you are seeking, through the application of magic, fails to happen. By applying magic to something, we are applying the tools of permanency to an outcome we desire. But what if we know we will be very upset if that outcome fails? Then we have fear of failure, fear of not getting what we desire. Fear attracts the very thing we fear. It sabotages our actions, our desire and our magic. But worse for us who practice magic.
As I said, the tools of magic are the vehicles of our double, and thus the fabric of permanency. If we apply these tools to a desire for which we fear the loss or failure of, then we are applying the tools of permanency to the talons of the Eagle in our soul. Far from moving towards freedom, we are embedding ourselves into the fabric of death and suffering not only deeper, but also cementing ourselves into bondage with powers which reach beyond our body’s death. The consequences are too terrible a nightmare to contemplate, or risk.
So first step is to always see if your desire harbours fear. If so, stop and work on that. Magic is best performed on things we really don’t care that much about. There is a secret in that.
1. The first type of magic is quite common, if not highly potent. This means using our inner-world to empower our outer world actions. Actors do this all the time, and you can tell when a bad actor becomes self-conscious, and loses the ability to create the mood required by the part. Artists of all kinds know about this very well. They feel when something takes over their body, uses their physical skills, and creates through them.
Anyone who writes poetry also knows this magic. Poetry is a good way to practice the engaging of our double. But all actors, musicians, poets and artists of any kind also know that the most effective way to achieve this transported state, is to switch off our inner dialogue. To suspend our mundane world, and to in effect, step aside from ourselves. To leave a kind of vacuum internally, which our double can then enter and apply a style, power and grace to our actions, which is far beyond our ability.
Lets give a simple exercise. Choose an action, like a movement of your hand across in front of you. Do it first in your normal mind and mood. Then compose yourself, still your inner mind, and act as if in trance, moving your hand across in front with presence and transported fluidity. Switch back and forth, to get the idea. When you move magically, you can feel all your inner powers - your vitality and your higher self - pouring presence and potency into your hand.
This type of magic is very good for healing. Lets take the massage stroke. Apply a little oil to your hands, put your leg up on the chair and rub it in. First just rub the oil into your leg with both hands in a practical, mundane-mind way. Then switch and feel how our hands are reaching down below the skin - move your hands with sensuality and grace. Then see how your hands are stroking not just your skin, but stroking light. Feel and see your hands moving light around - spreading it and breaking up the pockets of stagnation.
In this way we apply our inner double to our action, to achieve a magical result from that action - above and beyond that action. This type of magic can be applied to every action we do throughout our whole day, no matter how small. In that way we are conscious of our double infusing us in every small and great detail of our lives in a continuous partnership, which eventually merges.
What this means is that we no longer set aside some moment for poetry, or some moment for dance. We turn every action into poetry and dance. It is not easy to sustain this when tired and frustrated, but it is not that hard to remember to do it often. It is a bad mistake to think that at some point, we are ‘off stage’, no longer dancing or no longer writing poetry. Once we have done this magic once, we can then work to do it in everything. We never stop dancing or poetry. Can you brush your teeth poetically?
Naturally there are advantages to acting practically and not in trance. But it is not that difficult to see that our double can join us in every action - perhaps not always with grace, but definitely with magic. I could go on at great lengths about this magic. Look at the clothes you wear, the style of your house. Do they look the same as everyone else around you? Or have you been able to buy items of clothing and house items that are unique to you, that speak of your double? Look at the movies you watch - are they just replicas of your dominant culture’s attitudes and atmosphere? Are you living the life of your culture’s double?
Is the music you listen to the same as most people in your culture, or have you searched outside your culture’s double, to find the music your double likes? Very often we don’t know what the preferences of our double are, until we walk away from the common fare, search out the unfamiliar, till all of a sudden we find we are attracted to something that we had no idea about or reason for.
The other important feature of this type of magic is its ineffectualness. Once or twice has almost no effect on our lives whatsoever. The real trick with this type of magic, is that it has to be practised every day and all day - only by continuous repetition can this magic really make a difference to what we are doing, or to our merging with our double.
2. The second type of application is far more advanced.
You have to make up your own applications of this as it is so unique to who you are. But one of the best applications is the journey. I will give an example you can easily practise, then when you get the idea, you can find your own variations.
In this magic, we take the intent of our inner self, which should be our double, and use physical actions to symbolise and enact the ceremony of that intent.
Let say you have a desire for something, like a getting a job, or achieving some completion of an aspiration. Again, first stop and ask, what if it doesn’t come off? Can you be alright about that? Can you see that ultimately it doesn’t matter? Is their anger or fear of failure? If so, remove it. Begin without bombs in your baggage.
Go for a walk, and see that walk as the journey to your outcome. The walk is to become a metaphor for the path of purpose.
Project that the end of the walk, the final acts of the walk, will be the final decision or act of your ‘purpose’. The purpose you are using this walk to enhance with magic.
You have to gather around you, your magic cloak. This is not just an observation walk, you are also attempting to use a physical action as a symbol for your purpose, and investing into that symbol the power of your double. On this walk, you become your double, with all the powers inherent. You then utilise your presence, you gather yourself up into a walking magician in a magical play that will determine the outcome of your purpose.
In order to use this as a way to merge with your double, you have to be sure this purpose is also one your double will want to participate in. When that is accomplished, an extra element is invested - a spiritual journey, this walk being only one part of a larger purpose. You have to work that out, and on the walk, as your double enters into you, that aspect tends to work itself out. You may find your double has a different take on things to you.
Take very careful note of everything that happens along the journey. A car stops you from crossing a road, a green light suddenly appears or not, as you approach. Things that yesterday were just ducks on a pond, now become living symbols within your purpose, and they look at you knowing what is happening now. You pass a shop with a picture in the window - immediately you see meaning in that picture for your purpose. You meet someone you know - take careful note, not forgetting you are on a definitive walk, of what you talk about, the moods and the words.
Soon the energy of this symbol begins to take on its own power. If you are applying yourself, you will see a sign from your double, that it is with you. Remember you are using your Etheric body to add the vitality and presence, the concentration and focus - not forgetting for a moment that the outcome of this walk will influence the outcome of your purpose. The obstacles on the walk, how you approach them, how you feel about them and how you resolve them, are all tokens of the obstacles of your purpose. You can handle and resolve them here, on this magical walk, with the power you bring from your Etheric body.
Your Astral body lends the atmosphere and the magical landscape. This becomes like a science-fiction film. You see the forces for and against you arranged along your path. You are able to employ magical tools - visualisations and the projection of intent. If this is correctly activated, you will see an echo from the world, validating that the double is engaged through your Astral body. On the most recent one of these I was doing, I passed an otherwise unnoticed shop. It was a small outlet for the government department that deals with the handling and making of Wills and Estates. For some strange reason, on a board outside was a large picture of a beautiful, powerful, magical woman with one hand gracefully raised above her head, and with her other she was holding a chain leash to a very alert and fierce leopard. All gold on a black background - striking!
God knows what it was for, but for me it was a dramatic sign that the magical powers of my double were ‘on board’, and we were a team in this purpose.
As you get closer to your destination, it becomes critical. Every decision, and every chance event have to be elegantly and effectively negotiated. At that point, you will either get a sign of unassailable obstacles which will thwart your purpose - the time is not right - or you will get the opposite. The important thing aside from keen observation and realisation of meanings, is that you hold your intent strong and steady the whole way. That is the essential thing!
No matter what happens, you transform into your double, and you hold your intent like a steel beam before you - nothing can make you waver or forget. The power of your focus and sustain is what will break through all barriers that can be overcome.
This exercise is a useful and intimate way to draw your double into your physical world. That ultimately is the real purpose. The overt purpose is only a vehicle to exercise intimacy with your double. The double longs to manifest in the world through you, just as you long to manifest in the Astral world through your double. Don’t ignore or neglect your double - call it in again and again, and use all mundane tasks as symbols of greater tasks. Learn to live on multiple levels simultaneously.
When you have completed this, you will realise that your life journey is another walk, where there is a purpose waiting accomplishment at the end. Your whole life is a metaphor. Your double is drawing closer and closer in this life-walk, and every event is magical and meaningful. But we have to hold tight and strong to our primary purpose in this life-walk, as well as the exercise walk. Always remembering on multiple levels, what we are aiming at. Only then will our double sweep in and carry us on the beam of its intent.
Our double is actually the personification of this intent - the more accurate our aim, the more fast our hold, the more relentless our sustain, the more palpable our double becomes. Think of your double and its vehicles as a carriage, with horses, driver and footman. The carriage with all its components is like the subtle vehicles - these are our ‘double in capacity’. But our real ‘double in actuality’ is when we see the master inside the carriage. The master knows why he is there, where he is going and how he will get there. But the master won’t appear in the carriage till we have invoked him with our yearning and effort.
Michael Maher
