Tingling and
Sparkling

Changing Your Brain

The purpose of magick may ultimately be about changing our lives. When we talk about changing ourselves or changing our lives or changing our perception, we are talking, ultimately, about neurological change. Our brains must change if our experience of the world is to change. If we want more woohoo, then we must teach our neurology to organize itself for more woohoo. The kinds of change we want to happen in our brains are neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change neural pathways as it learns. Neurogenesis is the brain’s ability to grow entirely new neurons and neural pathways.¹

There are many ways to encourage both neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. Almost any kind of learning will change neural pathways. Drugs of various kinds encourage growth and change in the brain. For instance, recent genomic research into LSD demonstrated that the chemical activates genes responsible for neuroplasticity.² That seems to suggest that psychedelics tap directly into the brain’s ability to learn. Some antidepressant drugs activate neurogenesis in the hippocampus (which may be a more important mode of action in the treatment of depression than serotonin uptake inhibition).³ Movement and exercise promote both neuroplasticity and neurogenesis.⁴

For our purposes, we’ll consider three factors of perceptual experience that encourage neuroplasticity and neurogenesis: intensity, duration, and novelty. It’s simple enough—if an experience is intense enough, we remember it. How easy is it to recall a particularly intense experience? If an experience lasts long enough, we remember it. How easy is it to recall the things that you do every day of your life? If an experience is new and different enough, we remember it. How easy is it to recall your first kiss, your first rock concert, or your first time driving a car? Intense experiences change us and so do new and different experiences, as does repetition and rehearsal.

Aleister Crowley summarized the technique of invocation as “Enflame thyself with praying,” suggesting intensity and duration, at the least.⁵

A ritual or meditation practice that continues over time may partake of all three factors. The discipline of daily practice supplies duration, the change of state created by the practice creates novelty, and continued improvement in concentration and technique can increase intensity. Indeed, brain-imaging studies of experienced meditators demonstrate physical changes in the brain. A 2005 study of experienced practitioners of Vipassana (“insight” or “mindfulness” meditation) conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital, for instance, demonstrated that the practice appeared to encourage neuroplasticity and neurogenesis in areas of the cerebral cortex associated with attention, memory, and integration of emotions. In short, these areas were thicker in experienced Vipassana practitioners than in the non-meditating control group.⁶

There are many ways to add intensity, duration, and novelty to our imaginings. Adjusting submodalities can increase intensity. State entities created from our internal energy flows, if they flow or pulse, suggest duration. And new configurations can create novelty. Ready for a new configuration that explores all of the above?

What happens when our state entities meet our pantheon? Will we find a solemn procession of secret chiefs and internal gurus? Or the party we’ve always suspected was happening somewhere in the collective unconscious? We’ve explored the use of dissociated images to create god-like entities and we’ve practiced the creation of state entities for a variety of purposes. Now we’re going to put the pieces together and endow our personal pantheon with abilities, states, and flexibility of behavior.

Exercise 5.1 Instant Empowerment

 

Decide on a quality that you want to work with, something you want to invoke into your life or that might add woohoo to particular situations.

 

Create a dissociated image of yourself, in front of you and facing you.

 

Tweak the image of yourself to include the desired quality. What would you look like with that quality? How would it affect posture, facial expression, breathing, and other physiological modeling indicators?

 

Make that image god- or goddess-sized. For most purposes, this will be at least life-sized. Some gods or goddesses may be larger than human size; some may be vast.

 

Leaving that image in place, externally, turn your attention back into yourself. Create an energy flow in your body for that quality based on the feeling you would have if you were powerfully experiencing that quality. Enhance it by experimenting with size, color, and special effects.

 

Externalize that energy flow as a state entity—and place that state entity inside the god-like dissociated image previously created.

 

Breathe into this combined creation and notice how it changes.

 

Contemplate the creation for at least 30
seconds.

 

Step into the creation and turn to face the direction that it is facing.

 

Take some time to notice what happens as you stand in the same place as this entity.

 

Keep the entity with you and walk around your space.

 

Imagine what it would be like to enter various situations in your life with this entity enveloping you.

 

Keep as much of the entity and experience with you as you deem appropriate.

Just as a human being may be able to function well in a variety of states and situations, some gods and goddesses have a range of abilities and powers. This can give the entity a great deal of flexibility to act or offer information in many areas of life. The following exercise explores one of many ways to add powers to your entity.

Exercise 5.2 Adding
Powers to Your God/dess

 

Consider a situation in your life in which you may need a variety of resources. For instance, in a business situation, you might decide that it was important to have patience, perseverance, mathematical acumen, negotiation skills, and so forth. Make a list of at least three qualities.

 

Create an “instant god,” as in the previous exercise, that reflects the nature of that situation—for instance, a personal god or goddess of business that might fit the situation in the example above.

 

Instead of a single state entity applied to the dissociated instant god, add one state entity for each of the qualities you listed. That is, in the one entity called “Business God,” we might add state entities representing patience, perseverance, math skills, and so on.

 

Breathe into the god/dess and pay attention to how these all combine and/or interrelate. Observe any changes.

 

Contemplate the creation for at least 30
seconds.

 

Step into it, walk around a bit, and imagine what it would be like to enter various situations in your life with this entity enveloping you.

 

Keep as much of the entity and experience with you as you deem appropriate and absorb anything else. When you are fully done with the entity, absorb it all back into you and banish with Expansion/Contraction breathing.

In a sense, the process of adding state entities to your god/dess image is much like giving them chakras or a meridian system. Suddenly the image can express quite a bit more information about its state—and can have the flexibility to adapt resources from multiple states and the ability to change states when necessary. The entity becomes a bit more like a human being, with a choice of mind-states to operate from. It also gives us a way to operate on the image, improve it, and empower it (similar to what you might do for yourself) using meditation or energy work to change your state or improve your health. Balance your god’s chakras with woohoo!

Symbols and Anchors

We’ve already discussed how god/dess images, both traditional and meta-magical, are symbols for states. We might choose to differentiate between states that represent a single kind of experience, as symbolized by energy flows and state entities, and states that might include a longer time frame and the flexibility to move through a variety of experiences. In terms of traditional magick, the former might be simpler entities such as servitors, elementals, demons, or angels. The latter, more complex entities, are the deities, the gods and goddesses.

Symbols, of course, are anchors, cues that we can use to re-access states and information. When we see a god/dess figure (or read their name, hear their song, feel their presence, etc.), our brains activate the equivalent states. This is the essence of invocation; being in the presence of the god elicits the qualities within us. Experiencing the states as you create the god anchors them to the image and allows you to re-access the states at will simply by contemplating or visualizing the god/dess.

Anchors can activate your physiology before you are even conscious of the change. If you drive, for instance, hopefully a red light will have your foot moving to the brake without the need to ponder the significance of colored lights. The smell of dinner cooking can make you salivate faster than you can remember what kind of pets Pavlov kept. A telephone ringtone can you make you grab for the phone—or grumble about it—before you realize what you are doing.

Wouldn’t it be sweet if our god-consciousnesses could kick in automatically, exactly when needed? Would that add some woohoo to your life story? Intentional anchors can be created to activate states or behaviors based on your situation. The swish pattern is a flexible NLP anchoring technique, often used in habit control, which can be adapted to a wide variety of purposes.⁷ In its usual configuration, it uses an associated image—the situation—switched with a dissociated image of the self in a resourceful state. The associated image, from your own point of view, includes the sensory cues that will act as the anchor; the dissociated image activates the mirror neuron system to begin invocation. This may sound complex, but when you explore Exercise 5.3, you’ll discover that it’s a very simple process. For habit change, one might visualize one’s own hand just before it reaches for the cigarette pack and then switch that image for a view of a self who knows how to breathe clean, fresh air and considers health to be woohoo. Beyond therapeutic change, the swish can be used to help install positive habits. Want to become motivated to meditate at a certain time or place? Or how about feeling inspired to work on your novel every time you get near your computer?

Using gods and goddesses in the swish pattern can create even more powerful, flexible resource states. Imagine walking into a job interview with god-like powers of rapport. Or cooking dinner with the creativity and finesse of the Goddess of Art, driving your car with the quickness and fluidity of Mercury, or learning magick as the God of Wisdom.

Or, perhaps, filling every nook and cranny of your life’s story with woohoo.

Exercise 5.3 Swish Pattern of the Gods

 

Create an empowered god/dess using one of the techniques already described, but do not step into it—keep it external and send it off into the distance, perhaps to the other side of the room.

 

Consider a situation in your life where the qualities of this entity will be useful to you.

 

Make an image in front of you of how it would look to enter that situation. Note that this is an associated image, viewed from your own point of view. Place this image close to you, between you and the god/dess, so that it blocks your view of the god.

 

As quickly as you can, within the space of a second, if you can manage it, switch these two images, sending the associated image (of the situation) off into the distance and bringing the god/dess up close to you.

 

Again, as quickly as you can, set the images up with the god in the distance and associated image close to you, then switch them again, as quickly as possible. Repeat this switch as fast as you can, at least three or four times.

 

Then, without consciously thinking about the above procedure, think about the upcoming situation and notice what happens.

 

Absorb any externalized creations back into you.

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