10 July 2009

Mundane vs. Occult

When reading Bear Heart's memoir, The Wind is My Mother one of the things that gets repeatedly emphasized is the importance of what most people would call "mundane" skills. He talks about the importance of noticing your environment, learning to move your eyes first to look at something rather than your head, and other things along those lines. While it is clear that he is capable of both sensing and manipulating energy (and medicine men doing such things as moving feathers with their mind).

What struck me is that just about everything he talks about "energetically" is, at its core, an extension of skills that--on the surface--have nothing to do with energy. It seems that most modern books on occultism reverse this: they start by talking about sensing and manipulating energy, rather than sensing and manipulating the environment around you and your own mind.

It was noted by Dion Fortune and has long been recognized by occultists that astral/energy constructs degrade in this plane unless they are anchored to something relatively tangible. Similarly, there are a lot of things that energy may facilitate, but you should start learning how to do it energetically by learning how to do it physically.

If you want to lose weight go ahead and say the appropriate incants, visualize yourself as thinner in a mirror, but combine it with diet and exercise. If you want to get a job you might be able to help by lighting a green candle and channeling energy to it, but that won't mean much if your resume is poor, you aren't a good fit for the job, or you don't look presentable.

Virtually everything we do with energy can be enhanced by studying related things that, ostensibly, don't involve it. Not that energy work and shamanism cannot help or augment the work, but frequently one should start learning the energy work components by learning the non energy work components.

Too often in the modern occult community, however, I see people who neglect the physical to learn the energy. They want to burn little slips of paper or purchase spells of ebay instead of working out, going through a Dialectic Behavior Therapy workbook, or seeing a doctor.

Want to learn how to use glamours to project an image? Work on your posture, mastery of facial expressions, confidence, and emotional control. Work on posture mirroring and study communication. Get your clothes tailored, hair cut, nails trimmed, etc.

Want to learn how to heal? Study trigger point therapy, shiatsu, and deep tissue massage. Study medicine or psychology, or learn herbalism. Study how the body feels to the touch when it is suffering certain ailments and when it is healthy, and how different people's bodies feel. Study how the body works, how it fits together, and what happens when various things go wrong.

Want to learn how to perceive energy around you? Start with perception of the world around you. Learn to not just passively observe the world and let it pass unnoticed, but to truly see the world and to remember what you see. Extend it beyond your sight: What do you hear, what do you feel? Can you separate out your perceptions from your feelings?

Are you sick? See a doctor (or psychotherapist, depending on the form of the illness). Don't just pray, burn slips of paper, and hope everything gets better: go see a specialist, ensure you are getting proper nutrition, etc.

On the flip side: There is nothing wrong with studying energy work to get better at a craft you are already practicing. The point is the need for understanding of the balance, and how one leads to the other. One can learn to perceive energy by learning to pay attention, and can learn to pay attention as part of learning to perceive energy.

You can also see a doctor while visiting an energy worker or shaman--it is like receiving two different forms of treatment, and those forms can be complimentary--though it is generally best if one knows about the other. This is especially true with things that affect your own mental health or which involve your own mind. It doesn't have to be one or the other, and frequently things in one area can be made stronger by work on the other.

To summarize, as the saying goes: Pray to God and row for shore.

Further Reading


  1. Excellent, excellent post and something I've tried to hammer into people's heads for years.

    These things can work together but it's too easy to invest fully in the magical and not in the physical. Warding your house works, but should be in tandem with locks and alarms, as opposed to thinking you can leave your door unlocked (or worse, wide open) because big bad scary witchcraft will protect you. Hehehehe.

    Thanks for this!


  2. The flip side of this is being careful not to attribute "spooky foo" causes to something unexpected that happens. Not every instance of misfortune is a punishment from the gods, just as not every fortunate occurrence is proof of one's favor from Them. And real cursing/hexing does on far less often than is imagined, I believe. Sometimes shit just happens.

    I'm convinced that real instances of divine intervention are fewer and further between than is commonly believed, even for people who're heavily god-bothered or out-and-out owned. Most of the time we reap what we sow, that's all.

  3. That should be "goes on," not "does on." Meh.