Our modern social world is made up of the combine of moral systems. Each power system ... be it political, religious, social, economical, or sexual ... issues its own deck of reality pictures and moral credit cards. This moral combine includes power systems that we do not usually think of as moral systems. What I am thinking of are the systems of romance, glamour, and education. A moral system is a system that abstracts reality into mental pictures into the past/future.
Love others as yourself. Why? If you do, you will be rewarded sometime in the future. If you do, you will be paying back for something bad you did sometime in the past ... or, for that matter, for something bad you will do in the future. This is the logic of morals. It is individualistic ego-centered. It abstracts your dynamic relationship with the other out of reality.
Deep love can be defined with: treat the other as yourself, love the other as yourself, because the other is in fact yourself, is part of your body. So what you do to/with/for the other, you are doing to yourself within the point of action of now. Deep love goes back to the pre-shamanistic personal awareness of the land, the plants and animals, the others in the tribe, and in fact the whole physical existence as parts of the personal body, and hence within personal responsibility.
Unlike the living a magical life within the “traditional” tribal cultures, the magical workers who live in the modern culture have “regular” lives with regular jobs and regular social relationships. But like doctors, firemen, the National Guard, they are on call. They are on call for magical work. The magical work that takes many unknown forms from secret or public rituals to magical missions hidden in secret within the regular life. He arranges, orders, his regular life and relationships around this magical responsibility. Be he a shaman or an apprentice, the magical worker has to arrange his money, his job, his relationships, everything within his “normal” world so that he can always responsibly answer the magical call. To do this, he has to, in self-discipline, be loyal within his regular life to the magical reality which the magical tribe is creating in the underground of the cultural frame.
The apprentice must be loyal to the shaman and the system of magic which is using the shaman ... loyal to the shaman as the magical tribal community which uses the living shaman as its focal seed. Any comparison shopping of other magical systems, other magical paths or teachers after the first year in the apprenticeship would be simply a denial of the magic, not only of this particular Cherotic system, but of all magical systems. Time for this kind of spiritual bargain shopping has long since passed, passed after the opening stages within the first year of the work with the shaman. After this, any reality shopping is not taking responsibility for being called, not taking personal loyal responsibility for the shaman and others in the magical tribal community.
Other similar reality treasons of self-indulgence which can tempt all magical workers within this modern culture, are the little private contradictions to the magical culture. These private secret ways of thinking, of seeing life, of treating and being with people ... private ways that run cross-purposes with the magical reality ... these ways seem to the student of any rank to be so small, so private, so unimportant that he does not see the harm with trying these ways out. He usually thinks of these ways as his individual ways. But where these ways really come from is from the cultural frame. The student’s trying these ways on, exploring these ways as his individual personal expression, is in fact taking a bite from the apple of self-indulgence. It quickly creates an individualistic reality which is in conflict with the magical tribal reality.
This conflicting individual reality very quickly isolates, separates, the student from the shaman and the rest of the magical community. Unless the student very quickly falls back into actively trusting and surrendering into the shaman, the padded walls of his individual reality will grow thicker and higher, turning into a pock-riddled version of his former individual reality. The holes of denial and frustration in what once was a more or less complete individual reality frame were caused by the process of creating a magical alternative reality by using, rearranging, chunks of the old reality. These holes are why most students pulling out of the magical ritual of apprenticeship suffer from a low-grade insanity for a time. This is one reason why all magical work, and particularly apprenticeship, should be considered extremely dangerous. Although this distrusting student puts all of the power into the hands of the shaman, making the shaman into a slave master, in reality on this level the shaman has very little power. Only the student can trust. Only the student of any rank can act responsibly, can respond.
This personal tragedy is a real tragedy. But it is not the real damage of these little private deeds and thoughts of self-indulgence. If the student does simply dismiss such self-indulgent action as not worthy for the magical reality as soon as he finds himself in the middle of such indulgent thought invasion of a conflicting reality which we have called life-denials, he strengthens the shamanistic reality model, thereby transforming the life-denials into a new life-affirmation, not only for himself, but for everyone and everything in the entire web of ultimate reality. But if he does not simply dismiss it, he is creating a conflicting reality frame within the reality model of the magical tribal community. The longer the student considers, explores, analyzes this indulgent invasion, making it more and more his own, the more broadcasting power is given to the conflict reality of the life-denial. This jams more and more of the broadcast of the shamanistic reality model. The magical act required of the student, as of all magical workers, is not not being vulnerable to such life-denying invasions. The magical act is the dismissing. Not dismissing is also a magical act. The length of time that any person dwells within such a powerful ritual such as the apprenticeship invests within that person an increasing magical influence or effect. Because of this, the responsibility, the dangers, the risks and the possibilities always increase the longer you are involved in magical work.
What we magical workers (including teachers, shamans, and magicians, students, apprentices) are, know, think, understand, feel, learn is not important in the magical work. We are only important for responsible action. What is only important is this magical work, is the evolutionary alternative model of reality which is being introduced through the shamanistic tribal community. The goal is not that someday the general cultural frame will be transformed into the image of this tiny alternative magical model of reality. Rather the goal is the injecting of this different frame into the midst of the generally accepted reality frame, causing dynamic mutations nonlinearly within the evolution of the universal frame of reality. Because of this, any jamming influences caused by a magical worker not dismissing a life-denying invasion may have a widespread and nonlinear curse effect, a draining distortion.
This curse effect should be the most easily grasped for even the most linear-thinking beginning student of any magical system, that it is important in a magical ritual, in a public performance, to do the right gestures, to say the right words in the correct order to bring about the desired effects. After all, if the drummer of a band starts playing and singing a totally different song than what the lead singer and the rest of the band is playing, the result would be useless noise caused by prideful individualism.
Unfortunately, however, this most basic magical principle is not obvious to the student’s frontbrain, to his pictures of how things should work. Moreover, it gets less and less obvious to the frontbrain as the magical rituals, even the obvious public performances and the formalized secret private rites, sink into the student’s everyday mundane life, covered by layers of casualness. This dangerous dynamic develops at the exact same time as the magical power both of the student and of the rituals is increasing.
Here I am just talking on the very surface level of shamanistic magic. But even on this level, it is clear that the teaching/learning of magic deals less with ritualistic words, gestures, power objects and props, and more with the right attitudes and intentions. It is about the active and respectable surrendering into the magic, into personal responsibility, into the shaman and the magical community, into the lovemaking war for the life-affirmation.
But for the shamans, magicians, students, and apprentices living in the heart of the magic of all possibilities, everyday life with all of its aspects is an incredibly powerful broadcasting ritual station for the alternative reality frame to be injected into the cultural frame. Because of this, the magical life is not a home, although the magical workers feel at home at the magic. It is not a home for hiding, escaping, for having break times from the magical responsibility. Within the magical life, the spiritual and the mundane dimensions combine to create an intensity of living passion needed to broadcast the magical alternative reality. That is, within the magical life within the apprenticeship, the illusions of fragmentation that falsely divide being into compartments are erased. This creates a framework. Within this framework, life is a ritual in which every act, no matter how lofty or how mundane it appears, is a ritualistic act, a magical gesture, which has unknown nonlinear effects. This is why any casual attitude, any disrespectful handling of life tasks, any time spent in indulgently not dismissing life-denials is dangerous when done by those who live within the magical heart.
What is important is the life that the apprentice created for herself. This responsibility is not some occult thing. Everyday people do this everyday. Doctors, firemen, football players, artists, take on willingly and responsibly the framework of life as they answer the calling of their life work. At least the good ones, the real ones, do. Although they study what will be expected and required of them by the framework, the framework is never fully revealed in all the detail, mainly because the framework, as a living being, is always changing, requiring new sacrifices, new hardships, new givings. The good ones, the real ones turn the sacrifices into opportunities, the hardships into adventures, the new givings into treasures. This quality is what marks the masters of any field. The masters are too dumb, too innocent to see life as a crushing tragedy.
By taking this magical framework on as your own, by dancing with it as it changes, by melting with it in joyous responsibility, a wide channel for possibility-giving life-affirmations to come through without individual control is created.
The magical life is not focused on personal success, fame, money, social, romance, mates, babies, recognition, family, friends, or being comfortable, in control, knowing, understanding. All of these things are taken by the shaman to create an altered reality. But it was you who created the shaman. But if you start playing the role of the slave, the victim, the prisoner, the powerless, the questioner, the judge, then you have taken control of the ritual under the cover of false meekness. You have then denied your role of the willing servant to the magic, have denied your accepting of the magical calling. This creates an extremely powerful broadcasting station that life is a passionless burden, an overpowering moody gloom.
These conflicting broadcasts from within the shamanistic community are dangerous. Again, this danger should be the most obvious in formalized public and secret rituals where being of one mind, one body, one focus, one pure tone, one purpose is most important ... obvious unless casualness blinds content and purpose of such rituals.
But what is less obvious is the magical effect that each magical worker has in the hidden ritual which is in the marrow of everyday living. Of course, there is a whole range of non-knowable, nonlinear effects resulting from the dynamic interplay surrounding every magic life. But if you look around you for an extended time, you will begin to see that there are a group of possibly several hundred people around you who depend on you in a more or less direct linear fashion for a regular uplifting dose of magic, of new possibilities that radiate from you if you are a responsible magical worker. You will not have intimate personal relationships or even personal contact with most of these people. They are the clerks, the bank tellers, the waiters, the people who you pass on the street, etc. They look forward to the surge of new possibilities that they knowingly or subconsciously associate with seeing you, talking to you, being with you. Be clear that it is not you, talking to you, being with you. Be clear that it is not you, but what you represent, what is radiated through you that is servicing these people. It is simply not right to deny these people access to the magic, denying them an important role in the hidden revolutionary war of spiritual, cultural, and physical evolution.
This local webwork, as well as the majority of the dimensions of the magical work, is hidden, often blocked, from the student who takes himself (his individualistic surface personality) at all seriously; who does not, can not, laugh at himself in a non-belittling defacing way; who thinks he is a unique individual with special problems, special weaknesses, failings, special growth processes which nobody in history ever has had. This individual-centered view of life, this outlook of a spiritual teenager, cynically cheapens the whole dynamic pattern of relationships of the web of ultimate reality into an individual soap opera.
It is time to grow up. It is time to recognize that what we who are reading/writing/living this magical work are really doing is fighting in the front line trenches in the eternal evolutionary war between life-affirmations and life-denials. This work is on the side of the life-affirmations. In the trenches, the magical worker is not important. What is important is his ability, his willingness, his readiness to act responsibly within the eternal point of now. What is important is the magical worker’s loving loyalty to his fellow magical workers in the trenches and to the magic. This loyalty has to be so strong that it swallows up all concerns for individual welfare ... so strong that it erases all dividing, separating, fragmenting lines marking the “self” from the magical other, whether the magical other be in the form of another person, the planet intersystem, or the web of ultimate reality. This is the active surrendering of the magician/warrior. This is deep love, erour love. This is the alternative magical reality that the shamanistic tribe is injecting into this cultural frame.
It should be clear that the front line trench is not a place for nervous nellies, trigger-happy rambos, cowards, pampered souls, artists bent on self-expression. The trench is the suitable place for only serious warriors who will stop at nothing to channel life-affirmations, will back up their fellows with firepower, will go over the top against all hardships without any understanding or recognition.
For you who are in this book with me ... you apprentice in long-term time ... you full magician who is allowing this book to be fully explicit ... you beginning student who thinks you understand not understanding but sees just under the surface ... you for whom this is the first glimpse behind the curtain at the backstage of reality ... you should realize the sex we are dealing with here is making love to life, to reality. The war we are a part of is the nonlinear war waging beyond time and space. It should be clear that all physical violent wars throughout history are tools of the dark fragmentation of reality. It should be clear that we on this page are just starting out on a web poem walk together. What we have here is only the first smell of fresh magic.
For more information about or to purchase the paperback visit the Cherotic Magic website.