Consciousness and magic

As some of you may have read, I am a Reiki practitioner. In Reiki work (and, later, in some of the Shamanic work I’m learning), I worked with being a channel for a specific type of healing energy. I learned to feel different energetic points on clients’ bodies, and try to suss out emotional and physical issues from what I would feel.

This is a difficult thing for me to talk about. I understand that many people are skeptical of what I do. I understand. I, in fact, encourage skepticism. Just taking someone at their word can be dangerous. Skepticism doesn’t change the fact that I can feel something when I’m working on someone. And it seems that I am not alone. There are quite a few cultures with words for some sort of life force or energy, such as chi or prana. I use energy, though that can be confusing as it isn’t synonymous with kinetic or thermodynamic energy, but it’s the best I seem to have in English. So, I run with it.

This is where magic acts. The only way we seem to be able to interact with this energy is through consciousness. There’s been a lot of talk about how our consciousness interacts with the outer world, and it seems to get messy quick. Our consciousness creates the constructs through which we understand reality, after all. I’d like to point out that I didn’t say that our consciousness creates reality. There’s a lot we are not easily conscious of that still affects our reality. Our mind creates ways to interact with the world around us, though. Our eyes receive light. Our ears receive sounds. Our nose receive smells. There’s a part of us that can pick up energy and how it feels.

It seems to make sense, as matter is all just vibration. I read an interesting piece from the New York Times about how nothing is truly alive. It cites how life is a useful label, but in the end just a delineation to better understand phenomenon occurring about us. Many mystics would argue that the opposite is true, that we live, not in a dead universe, but a live one. It has been suggested that all matter has a level of consciousness, all part of a super consciousness. It’s a theory that would erase the difficult line of what’s alive and not, while suggesting that there is something more to everything, that there is some sort of order inherent in all matter of the universe.

I would argue that this is how parts of magic work. Everything being a certain vibration of the bigger thing, a gesture of the infinite, carries with it an energetic correlation with bigger astral cycles. When I mention Angelica is a solar herb, I’m putting its energetic vibration (astral wavelength, magical juju… whatever you want to call it) in an organizational bracket with the energetic vibration of the sun. Put that onto your person, mixing with your astral self, leads to certain interactions. In Angelica’s case, it’s an herb of consecration, blessing, and protection. Its vibes interact with your consciousness to create a certain effect within the realms of your mind and energy.

Ritual is a way to direct these energies. Using triggers for your mind to interact with your subconscious, you can move these astral powers in a way that will interact largely with other conscious beings. When I do a ceremony to bless items, that further reinforces the purpose I’m trying to use that item for in said item. My consciousness, and the consciousness of the spirits that I am working with (if you believe in that sort of thing) interact with the consciousness of the item I am blessing. Whether that item is indeed on some level conscious, or the only place its consciousness exists is in my mind and, later, whoever ends up with the blessed item is up for discussion.

And that is a little bit of magic theory, as I see it. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts or questions.

Thank you for reading.

Until next week….

-The Green Mountain Mage