photo by Antonio Filigno via Pexels
by Christopher Penczak, edited by Tina Whittle
Magickal spirituality is many things to me, but two keys have always been the quest for attainment and the intention of embodiment. I see myself as part of an ancient, non-linear, decentralized timeless tradition of magickal priesthood, and I find kinship in others who are also a part of it, in this time or ages past, whether they would necessarily use this description or not. Despite identifying as a Witch at heart, I find this kinship with mystics of all stripes and seasons. What do we have in common? Attainment and embodiment.
The quest for attainment is a paradox, for part of the understanding of it is non-doing in the context of doing, crafting, or working. Through our effortless effort we become what we are always becoming. Our becoming contributes to the becoming of the world, the Great Work. As creatures in the Garden of Time, our eternal becoming—our “I am that I am, thou art that”—is expressed in patterns and progress. In spiritual study, we experience degrees of training, ranks of initiation, or titles of experience. Our most common triune model is trade guild apprentice, journeyman, and master, found in the three degrees of many covens and the three orders of ceremonial magick lodges in the Hermetic Qabalistic traditions modeled in the Golden Dawn systems. The patterns provide a map to understand where you are, where you have been, and to prepare you for where you are going next. Once we attain one step and complete a stage, we really don’t “have” anything but the experience to go onward to the next. Some make the mistake of attaining a title as ownership of a mystery, missing the point entirely.
One can embody a teaching, live a teaching, but not own it. To truly have mastered a mystery one must not just learn it intellectually, or do it through ritual or even life experiences, but digest it and integrate it into the matrix of your being. Those of the magickal priesthood embody the virtues of the mysteries, transforming themselves and remembering what is true in one stage is not always the truth, or at least the focus, in another. At deeper levels of the mysteries, the behavior of the magickal person can be hard to understand as they are working with forces unknown to most. While magickal training can balance the personality, in doing so it can lead to extremes. We can find ourselves on a plateau of one extreme, and if we wait too long before seeking attainment of the next, grow distorted and arrogant in our place. We fail to embody the principle of eternal becoming.
The only way we can truly embody is by attaining, moving, and living in a pattern. We continue to grow and evolve while in the fields of time and space, and return to the eternal with the depth of direct experiences. The only way we can attain is through the integration of embodying the qualities in our day-to-day life. While service to community, veneration of the divine, and the keeping of rituals are all well and good—and are parts of my own practice—many of my peers in the Timeless Tradition do not. Those seeking magick for personal empowerment alone might not yet have opened the gate to magickal priesthood, but even in using it for all the “wrong” reasons, they have opened the door to magickal spirituality (even those looking for power over others as their only goal, from leading the mesmerized to gallantly telling others what they should do, think, and believe). Even then, the door to magick is opened.
And magick has its own ways. While on one fundamental level, it’s a mindless force, like electricity, it has also been personified as a god, as the Egyptian deity Heka, or even the Witch Soul. Magick has its own mind and will at times. Magick has a way. Yet in the magickal priesthood, all use these twin keys, attainment and embodiment, whether they describe them as such or not. The keys are continuously cut into new shapes, but they open each chamber in the temple of the mysteries until the final mystery is reached.