Magical Shadow Work

 

This is part 1 of a three part article that is the introduction to Magical Shadow Work and Ordeal XV. I will be writing a book about this ordeal in the future. Here is the basic understanding to this masterful challenge that all adepts must face in their magical and spiritual career. 

Shadow Work is a very popular topic these days and there are lots of books on the subject with a full regimen of practices and journaling. Some of the available online information advise would-be shadow workers to consult with a therapist and not try to do these practices alone. Others take a less intense approach that seems friendly to anyone. Certainly, those who suffer from mental health issues shouldn’t engage with this kind of work, but with the large array of practical applications and books on the subject, it seems like an inviting approach to gaining a full understanding of one’s self. There is almost a kind of New Age sheen to this topic, as it has become very popular over the last decade or two. However, a serious approach to this kind of work does require a solid psychological foundation and an overall healthy mental outlook on life, as well as a degree of openness, courage and self-confidence. Real shadow work is not for the faint hearted nor the superficial devotee of trends.

So, despite the hype and the alluring faddism regarding this practice, it is quite real and represents a true methodology to expose us to our darker selves, showing us an image of ourselves that contains everything that we seem to dislike or repress about ourselves. It also presents us with the means to integrating that shadowy nature back into our conscious selves. The shadow is the part of ourselves that has been displaced from our conscious self and is filled with those characteristics that we have been told by parents and authority figures are bad behaviors, inclinations or impulses. We start out in life without any real shadow, functioning as a whole but severely underdeveloped human being. As we travel through life our parents, teachers, and other authority figures judge our behavior, and encourage those activities that are considered appropriate in social settings and family life, and suppress those that are considered inappropriate or wrong. We grow up learning about the differences between good and evil, and we try, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much, to adhere to the standard presented to us.

However, the shadow does not just contain those attributes of ourselves that are negative or deemed socially unacceptable. Many people also suppress their creativity or their genius for doing things that are above average so that they might fit in with their peers and avoid rejection. Being too smart, too artistic, too insightful, and too anything will cause individuals to be rejected or not considered one of the peer group. The exceptions are physical beauty or athletic skill, which are more a part of genetics and good fortune than any kind of external social grace or internal reckoning. Being a member of the upper class certainly can make mediocre people into members of the “in crowd,” and avoiding extremes or forms of high excellence will ensure that one is an acceptable and accessible member of the group. Mediocrity is highly acceptable, but exceptionalism in any form has a social cost.

In ancient times people avoided outwardly showing any degree of material success or good fortune to their peers to avoid the effects of jealousy and the “evil eye.” That kind of cautionary behavior has found itself in the present age as well. Most people, therefore, leave behind their personal treasures as well as their potentially bad behavior to be accepted by their peer group and to become a favored and privileged member of their society. All of these qualities end up residing in our shadow, and often we are barely conscious of what we have sacrificed to be an approved member of our social group. We adhere to these standards of social acceptance whether we realize it or not, unless, of course, we perversely seek to break them. 

Some people reject these standards partially or completely while others are incapable of following some or all of them, to their unfortunate social detriment. Those who don’t follow the expected norms are a deviant group where bohemians, revolutionaries, thieves, thugs, murderers, arsonists, and violent terrorists find themselves, but also anyone who is member of the suppressed and despised minorities. Our cultural shadow is like a big carnival tent containing a variety of marginalized or unwanted people. 

As a Witch and ritual magician, I have found myself occasionally accused of being in league with various anarchists and secret cultists, and I am sure that other minorities, whether by racial, religious, gender, or sexual preference biases have found themselves placed in some suspicious group as well. It is easy to judge and condemn whole groups of people, especially those who are powerless to actively defend themselves. It has become a single-minded fad in our current national political culture, where oppressing the supposed “bad” (non-white or abnormal) people is a popular pastime of the recently empowered rightwing bigots, racists, misogynists, and fascists (who call themselves Republicans). One could easily say that America itself has succumbed to its dark shadow side with the activities and beliefs espoused by the current administration and their donor class backers.

This divergent pathway leads to the domain of shadows and the ubiquitous “Other” that represents how societies and cultures determine their own collective shadow. All of this should be included in the study of shadow work because individual shadows are characters that reside within a cultural shadow, and sometimes a person’s shadow whose conscious persona is considered part of the cultural shadow by others, would be solidly and boringly normal, if not also judgmental, racist and bigoted as qualities associated with their shadow self. I think that my own shadow has attributes that would express itself in a racist and misogynist manner while proclaiming to be a conventional and normal Christian man. I still use the names of God and Jesus in vain when perturbed, even though I am a steadfast adherent of Witchcraft. That is something to ponder.

Continuing with this analysis, a criminal might have a lawful and moral shadow, or they might simply be allowing their dark nature to be seen and projected without any kind of filter. What this means is that a person’s shadow is complicated by the culture that they reside in, and it is not really easy to determine the qualities of a person’s shadow. Defining one’s shadow is, therefore, not as simple as putting together a list of the things we detest or fear about ourselves. Our shadow lives in a kind of shadow land, so there is the problem of defining our shadow and the contextual shadow world it resides in. Still, the shadow gives us endless clues, particularly when we project the negative attributes of our shadow on to other people that we intuitively dislike, and project its positive attributes on to those whom we impulsively idolize. 

Everyone who is a mature adult has some kind of dark side or shadow. A person might appear mannerly, gracious, kind, generous and compassionate, but they also have a shadow or dark side that is crass, odious, mean, selfish and indifferent. Unless people have addressed their darker and repressed side of themselves then they will be plagued with moments when their internal darkness leaks out regardless of how good they might appear to others. We all have our less than admirable moments of weakness when we show a side of ourselves that contradicts our assumed persona. Our persona is that which embodies the attributes of our self that we want people to always see. We may believe and insist that we are good people, but this is often only a mask that hides a part of ourselves that is decidedly negative. Our overall selves are complex and contain contradictory attributes, and because we need to present ourselves in some kind of unified manner, we will behave in a way that supports our self-belief and suppresses behavior that goes against how we see ourselves. Our persona is how we want to be seen by others, yet our shadow contains everything that we seek to omit from that self-definition, whether deliberately or unwittingly.

Contradictions and conflicts between the shadow and the persona can tarnish a well-meaning individual with hypocrisy and duplicity when their darker side accidently comes out of hiding. When a person insists that they are unanimously good in all their activities and intentions, they are similarly daring their dark side to come out and show itself at moments of frustration and helplessness. Claiming to be a force for good at all times is as much of a form of self-deceit as it is to claim to be always bad. We are never always one thing or another since we are so complex as individuals. Yet often our darker intentions and impulses will bleed out when we are unaware or when we are imbalanced by misfortune, surprise, moments of personal weakness, or self-doubt. This happens to us when we experience events that trigger a psychic interaction with our shadow, allowing it to briefly emerge. Events that can trigger a psychic inversion where the shadow dominates the self are different for everyone, since they are dependent on our life experiences, our affected persona quality, and our inherent psychological dynamics.

This is the reason why I am dubious at the claims of would-be spiritual teachers or political leaders who can do no wrong, and supposedly high-minded New Age folks who espouse to be exclusively white light practitioners of love, bliss and peace; since it is more likely that their shadow is darker than normal, and when it comes out, their followers are very shocked. It is for this reason that I see a parallel of the shadow with the theme of the Picture of Dorian Grey. Except in this case, the picture shows what we truly look like as adults while looking through a dark, obsidian mirror. It doesn’t matter how good a person we think we are, or how nicely we have behaved over our lifetime, when all that we have repressed has painted a picture of ourselves that we would find loathsome and despicable. That, in a word, is the dark trick played on those people who think that they are predominately or exclusively good. It is also why I tend avoid people who pretentiously idolize their own supposed goodness. It just rings fake and hollow in my mind. Even someone who is balanced and seemingly normal can be thrown off by the wiles of their shadow.

When I talk about the religious aspects of Witchcraft, I speak of the powers of light and darkness, not just light. There is a polarity in Witchcraft, both from a magical energy perspective and a theological perspective. There is no absolute light or darkness, but they take turns and work together to formulate the world we live in. The cycle of night and day, winter and summer and the points in transition between them are a natural representation of this interaction of light and darkness. From this point of view, there is no white or black magic, there is no good or evil. There is only our intent and our desire, our vector in life, and the consequence of our actions. This resonates both through our persona and our shadow. They are fully integrated into our magic and religion as two opposites that have a common source - the One. Thus, Witchcraft as a religion admits that there is a dark attribute to all conscious beings, preparing and opening us to experience the interplay of light and darkness, in nature, people and society, and in ourselves. Of course, light and darkness also represent life and death, and because most people fear death in some manner, then death itself, especially the death of the ego and the persona that we carry, is also an attribute of our shadow.

Liminal states can be found where the shadow and persona touch and meet, and it is here where habits and addictions reside that can pose health problems and self-destructive behavior, which is dimly conscious and yet still active. People can inform us that we have a drinking or drug problem or some other kind of socially unacceptable health issue, and typically we will deny that it is a problem until we fully realize it, often at the nadir of its effects on us. Conversely, we can find ourselves living an empty life that momentarily becomes filled with inspiration and joy, fueled by our repressed creativity or excellence, only to have it quickly depart when we recognize that we are engaging in something that we have deemed to be unacceptable about ourselves. The place between light and darkness, the persona and the shadow, is also the place of true religion, magic, and mystery. It is a place of twilight, marked by the intersection of the spheres of light and darkness, symbolically making a convex and concave joining of crescent shapes, combining together to formulate the archetypal image of the Vesica Pisces. This shape represents the mystery of the unified Self and the place between light and darkness.

This domain of twilight is the place where our dreams become powerful instruments of instruction and inspiration, if we are brave enough to open ourselves to that in-between state. In the shadow land are mysteries, magical powers, devils, demons, monsters and the host of the underworld. Yet there are also the various embodiments of Deity, Gods, Goddesses, Angels, ancestor spirits, heroes and heroines, and the ghost roads that interconnect them into a singularity. It is through the gateway of the twilight world that we can meet and gain inspiration through our exposure to that secret place.

It would seem to us that there is mostly a stasis or equilibrium between the darkness and light in our personality, and that would be true if we were not dynamic beings. Yet it just as often seems as if the darkness and light are at war within our psyche, and our ego-based persona seeks to maintain its dominance to keep the denizens of the darkness at bay. Yet often there are leakages and times when the darkness surprises us or even overcomes us, either momentarily or sometimes permanently, as in cases of mental collapse. Any perceived balance is either a deceptive illusion or the calm before the storm.

However, it is our closed attitude to the darkness within us that is the cause of our sufferings and problems. We constantly place an insoluble border between our shadow and our outward persona, but that doesn’t need to occur. If we understand that our inner psychic polarity can be mitigated by relaxing our borders between light and darkness, and eliminating our inner governing self-judgment, then we will realize that this polarity is nothing more than opposing or conflicting beliefs and ideas about ourselves and our world which are ultimately illusory. This is because our own personality, both the light and darkness, exist in a perpetual state of paradox. To accept this internal paradox is to realize the mystery of ourselves and the mystery of all human beings. 

This state of mindful self-acceptance is also the most important first step of initiatory transformation, since we must enter into our shadow land and confront our individual shadow to undergo the process where we are made whole and spiritually complete. I have written books on the subject of transformative initiation, but the shadow and our inner underworld are the primary keys to spiritual enlightenment, only requiring one additional personality. 

Frater Barrabbas 

Science, Religion and Magic - They are not opposed

 

A common myth and misconception about magic is that it is opposed to science, and somehow the two approaches to reality are completely different and inimical to each other. I believe that this myth has been propagated by individuals who are trying to debunk anything that would be considered occultic or metaphysical. Those who are spreading this myth tend to be scientists and the sober representatives of an ordered and rational society. Their belief that magic and the occult are superstitions that should have been discarded from the body politic two centuries ago is based on an erroneous assumption that somehow science is superior to religion in general, and occultism in particular. It’s the old trope of rationalism and the perfection of logic vs. irrational and superstitious beliefs based on ignorance (of scientific facts). 

This is, of course, a false belief that is certainly contrary to the history of the origins of science, and that instead of being opposed to the gradual establishment of the scientific method, magic played a role in its development and evolution. In the Renaissance, magic and science were intertwined so much that modern scholars believe that they functioned as a unified perspective, where gradually, science grew out of and completely replaced the rationalism that magic brought to early scientific endeavors. At the present time, magic and occultism still represents a rational and disciplined perspective of the material and spiritual worlds, perceived as being united and indivisible, something that the discipline of science has rejected because spirit cannot be quantified in an empirical manner. While popular pundits for science would like our post-modern society to drop magic, occultism, and the supposed irrational attributes of religion, along with the perpetuation of mythic beliefs and religious world views, they remain stubbornly entrenched and viable within the human condition. There must be some reason for that phenomenon.

The reason that society hasn’t discarded all of the irrational and mythic beliefs, deposed forms of religious immersion, and dropped magic, spirituality and occultism after the supposed triumph of science and technology is because human beings are not robots. As organic beings, we have intense emotions and feelings, we engage with those around us and our social sphere within an emotionally charged bubble, we are moved by personal and cultural myths, we fall in love, get angry, fight with each other, start wars, make peace, and propagandize our relationships with everything in our world view.  We are hardly the rational and logical, stoical and self-disciplined mass of people that some think we should be, like the propaganda spread from scientists and their media proponents. We have the ability to function rationally and to discipline ourselves to behave within certain socially acceptable parameters, but we can also act thoroughly irrational and express ourselves in an unpredictable and emotionally charged manner. We are human beings, and we cannot be adequately quantified, qualified, or predicated. As Number 6 said in the series The Prisoner, “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own!”

Since we are an irascible species, we cannot be defined, or to define the world, in a purely scientific and empirical manner because our humanity always intervenes. Still, there is no real struggle between the rational and the passionate of life’s experiences, because we need both to function as human beings. This brings me back to my statement that once magic and science went hand in hand, and for occultists and practitioners of ritual magic, they still do. 

As a long time ritual magician with decades of experience, I can tell you for a fact that I do not readily succumb to conspiracies, urban myths, superstition, nor unwarranted religious beliefs. I am, in a word, innately skeptical. I am also open minded, and also grounded within my experiences, willing to accept what I sense and perceive as a fundamental part of my reality. I have to experience something in order to accept it as a fact for myself, but I am very curious about our world and the people who populate it. That curiosity and an open minded approach, guided by skepticism and a need to objectify what I experience in a highly subjective environment (magic and occultism) makes me closer to a scientist than a religious adherent who passionately believes their creed is true without any objective proof. That alone makes me pragmatic in my approach to magic, and I regularly subject my ideas and aspirations in that field to experimentation. In fact, regarding the functionality of magic and its practice, I accept nothing and test everything. What that means is the lore that I use is subject to experimentation, review, revision and even discarding unworkable rites and ceremonies that no longer serve their purpose.

There is a rationality underlying my work in the magical arts, as well as a discipline and a regimen of praxis that is always under constant development. I create new rituals to fill certain functions, test them, refine them, experiment with inspired ideas and constructs, and then revise older rites and ceremonies, or retire them as no longer useful. I function, albeit in a very subjective domain, as a kind of scientist as well as a creative artist. I believe that anyone who seeks to practice magic and engage with the philosophy and metaphysics of occultism also needs to be skeptical, objective, rational, mindful, and even a bit empirical in their approach to this art. This practice is an art, by the way, and I don’t consider it either a hard science or a soft science. I am engaged in a performative art form that has the power to transform my mind and ecstatically inspire me with visions and insights, which I call gnosis. Yet I also seek to apply objectivity and rationalism to what I do and the subjective nature of what I experience, because I am skeptical even of my own visions and what I learn from my intercourse with various spirits and entities.

Having made these various arguments about how I am both an artist and a scientist in my approach to magic and occultism, I can make some generalizations about the discipline of ritual magic and about ritual and ceremonial magicians. Science, without considering the human factor and its inherent limitations, that is, without magic, is a soul-less and unprincipled discipline that can only ultimately destroy human life on this planet. I know that is a pretty stark pronouncement, but when science and technology are employed without any ethical restraints or humanistic considerations, it will produce monsters and unleash forces or produce toxic materials inimical to human survival. Humanistic principles, ethics, insightful laws and wise leadership are the guard rails to ensure that science and technology proceed in a manner that benefits not only humanity, but life on this planet in general. Pure and unfettered science and technology are a danger to continued human survival without the intervention of humanistic principles. The arts and social sciences should be the inspiration and guide-posts to building a profitable and humane future.

Similarly, magic without science is also problematic. It is the epitome of pure absurdity, where one passionately believes nearly anything however irrational without recourse to objectivity or disciplined thought. Someone who approaches magic in this manner is more than just a fool; they are advertising their descent into madness and delusion. It is a state of mind where urban myths, conspiracies, fabulous lies are taken as truths however great the cognitive dissonance. While this state of mind might allow someone to be functional and not be institutionalized, engaging in magic and occultism with this kind of mental malady will only help them to step across the border between sanity and insanity. In my many years of practice, I have met individuals who were so impaired, and what they achieved was a tragic end to their fruitless pursuits, as they were either institutionalized or became suicidal. A fellow magician once told me that he thought that practicing magic would never cause anyone to go insane unless they were already on the boarder line between sanity and insanity. Because 1 out of 4 individuals suffer from some kind of behavior health issue then taking a sober and rational approach to the practice of magic is probably a good idea.

Another thing that I have experienced over the years is that some people find themselves wholly incapable of being able to sense the subtleties of the magical or spiritual world. I can see into the spiritual domain and have conversations with the entities within that world, and also engage with the forces and energies that reside there. I have an intuitive ability to expand my imagination that allows me to sense the domain of spirit. I have also practiced and honed these skills over decades of time so that they are a natural part of me. Probably one of the factors for me to have this ability is that I am very susceptible to emotional empathy with other people and even animals (I have a menagerie of pets). Perhaps I am wired with more mirror neurons than the average person, if that causes one to be too empathetic, and I have a natural aversion to opening up to strangers dues to this sensitivity. While I have these tendencies, I have met others who lack it entirely. What I have found is that it is fruitless to try to teach someone magic who doesn’t have this innate ability to emphasize with others and also use their imagination in a free and creative manner. I also find that such individuals have difficulty emotionally relating to religious practices or sensing the presence of deities in churches and temples. A person who does not have these sensibilities can only approach religion with either a steadfast fixed belief (without any corroboration) or to be an atheist who cannot fathom anything immaterial like spirituality. 

Since I have a strong sense of the spiritual reality, religion is naturally a practice that I find important and significant in the practice of magic. Religion and magic seem to easily go hand in hand together, similarly to science and magic. It would seem that the ubiquity of magic is the real factor here, because it appear to go together with any discipline. However, I have found that my religious practice, which is melded into my practice of magic, making them one and the same, forces me to adopt a spiritual discipline that determines my overall life direction and guides my choices with ethical considerations and adherence and fidelity to my alignment to my chosen Deities. While I may not have a set of Ten Commandments or other dogmatic rules and strictures guiding my actions, I do have a strong sense of right and wrong as established and inspired by my religious worship. I believe that religion and magic should be in a strong alignment with each other, just as the rational and quasi empirical approach of science should guide the mental discipline of practicing magic. However, my religion is the core of my magic, and with me, they are indivisible. My Gods and Goddesses walk with me in my religious and magical life, but I also approach what I experience with a bit of skepticism and objectivity. The key is to balance the two approaches and to find a peace midpoint where they all meet and function as a very productive and insightful life process.

That said, I must make another pronouncement, and that is a magician without religion is a particularly monstrous individual. Such an individual is without the ability to emphasize with others and engage with spirituality and Deity, but they have developed an intuitive capacity to use magical energies, to enchant others with their false glamor and their fictional persona, and project their will into the world to powerfully influence others and to bend reality to benefit only themselves. 

You might be wondering if such an individual actually exists in the world, and they do indeed exist, almost too numerous these days to discount it as an impossibility. You will find them as very successful hucksters of all kinds, con artists, propagandists, peddlers of crank cures and remedies, and perhaps the most successful of all of these individuals is Donald J. Trump, who is currently the nightmarish POTUS imperiling our country. Trump is a masterful and powerful magician, or so one of my close friends has pointed out to me and I have become a believer. Trump has gained this knowledge intuitively and implicitly through learning to manipulate the media, beginning when he was the star of his own reality TV show, the Apprentice. He is a man completely without any empathy, callous, pathologically narcissistic, but he has managed to convince a large population of dupes that he is a great leader who can solve all our nation’s ills. He holds large rallies in order to vampirize the emotions and adulation that he produces and then uses that power to enchant and gaslight the voters of this country. I would call that a succinct definition of a magician, but of a sort that I find monstrous and dangerous, not only to me individually, but even to the world at large.

If I were to classify the kind of magicians functioning in the world today, it would be those who engage both science and religion, those who lack science, and those who lack religion. Of the three, only those who have found a balance between science and religion are the true practitioners of magic, while those who lack science are harmless cranks, but those who lack religion are dangerous exploitive hucksters and con artists. It seems a narrow path to follow, and discipline, objectivity, empathy, and mindfulness greatly help the practicing ritual magician. However, it is a pathway that also has a lot of creative and productive output, and it allows for a great deal of variances in practice. Such a ritual magician is both harmless to others (but not weak and ineffectual) and yet helpful and inspiring to others with their wisdom, gnosis, and artistic perspectives. Still, keeping a balance is a good thing to achieve, and it takes advantage of the powers and insights of the art of magic without falling into the abyss of delusion or fecklessly catering to the complete exploitation of others.   

Frater Barrabbas

Truth or Lies and Magic

 To believe in the efficacy of magic and to practice it is also to be accused of possessing or believing in a fantasy world that doesn’t bear the scrutiny of science or logic. However, as someone who believes and practices ritual magic, and who has done this for decades, I find that such a simplistic approach does not take into account that human nature has an emotional and romantic dimension to it that cannot be dispelled by logic or empirical science. While the concepts of spirits, deities, energies and paranormal qualities can be shown to be attributes of the conscious mind itself, and its cultural collective, occult practitioners have typically had to deal with the cognitive dissonance of living in the post modern world and practicing rites that would be better understood from the perspective of the middle ages or the early renaissance. Still, these are all phenomena that are a part of the emotional, irrational and artistic, creative mind-set, neither invalid nor subject to scientific testing.

What this means is that a practitioner of ritual magic can live in the post modern world and also work with deities, spirits, energies and seemingly paranormal perceptions without dooming their ability to objectively deal with the world and function in a rational and logical manner. Practitioners of magic do not reject the world of science, logic and academia as some might think. Instead they extend their world-view, beliefs and perceptions to include other possibilities and perceptions based on their experiences, realizing that magic and its various attributes are part of the phenomenon of individual and collective consciousness. In other words, the world-view of science and the rational liberal arts are the foundation to understanding and practicing the arts of magic and the philosophy of occultism. Beliefs are tested by experience and by peer review so that they might retain a high degree of sane rationality. When this balance between belief, experience and factual knowledge break down then all sorts of crazy ideas, conspiracies and forms of outlandish self-glorification can and do occur. It starts one down a slippery slope that can lead to a form of complete social dislocation and even temporary madness.

We engage with our ritual magical practices with our feet firmly planted in the world of occult philosophy, science and the liberal arts, taking a rational and balanced pathway that is guided by a certain degree of skepticism, objectivity and input from our peers. Using this approach, we keep ourselves from acquiring a world view that is wholly divorced from facts, logic and rational thinking. This is not say that I am promoting an approach to magic that excludes imagination, creativity, artistry, vision and emotional aspiration, in fact these are critical components for practicing ritual magic. What I am promoting is a healthy balance between occultism and its practices and an objective world-view based on facts. So we can practice what Dion Fortune referred to so many decades ago as “Sane Occultism.”

This brings me to the point of my article. I am presently observing my nation torn apart by divisive and delusional beliefs and opinions that have absolutely no basis in facts. Of course, even the media inspired perception of a social division in our country is likely a form of sensational hyperbole, but it is occurring within a group of people on the far right of the political spectrum, leaving those of us in the center and the left scratching our heads and trying to understand what is happening to some people. I had thought that my beliefs and practices would be subject to derision and disdain, but actually, I seem to be very rational and sane compared to these folks even if I practice magic and talk to spirits and deities. One would think that I was the odd-ball individual promoting and practicing a system of dubious and nefarious behaviors. Yet compared to these folks, I am the paragon of sanity and rationality.

In our troubled times, facts are no longer seen as the foundation of knowledge. What appears to be important these day are emotionally driven opinions that do not require any kind of rational analysis or scrutiny. Logic and critical thinking are given up for emotionally satisfying platitudes, politically toxic propaganda and view-points based on a fantasy world-view. This disease of the mind is affecting a small percentage of our nation’s population, but they are driven and given currency but media companies that seem to be only interested in making money and not reporting the news in a factual manner.

I am, of course, referring to Fox News, but they are just one of many right-wing media organizations that are spewing a form of poisonous propaganda that is endangering our democratic institutions. The conservative political mind sees the slowly changing demographic of our nation, where white Christian Protestants are becoming a minority in a very racially and culturally diverse country, as a kind of existential threat. The only solution in such minds is to suppress the rights and civic privileges of those who are not of the white race in favor of those who are, and thereby establish a kind of racial and religious apartheid backed up by a political authoritarian regime that would replace our democratic republic.

I can tell you right now that in such a regime people like me would not only lose our rights, but also our freedoms. I would be part of the unruly crowd that would find itself in concentration or reeducation camps, if not outright exterminated. I might be a white northern European man, but I am certainly not the right kind of white person because I am not at all Christian. I would imagine in such a nightmarish world that many others of my fellow Witches, Pagans and various other occultists would find ourselves zealously persecuted. We would be joined in our imprisonment by blacks, non-white Hispanics, Jews and people of color. Since I have written articles and published books, I would be one of those targeted and unable to hide in the anonymous crowd of white faces.

Of course, this kind of extreme outcome is not very likely to happen, since the majority of Americans have a tendency to rebuke authority and to be largely contrarian and nearly ungovernable as a people. I doubt that if obvious and threatening moves were made to deconstruct our democracy and to install a religious and racial based tyranny that the majority of the people of my country would not take that change without a very forceful backlash and inspired moral outrage. Such a perceived civil war would be over quickly if it even had the chance to start. What we are seeing today is the balance tilted to the far right, and our social and political world is due for a swing to the political left that is coming soon. That is, certainly, my fervent hope.
 
The phenomena that we are witnessing is the gullibility, foolishness and cognitively biased perceptions of a small percentage of our population who are misled and misinformed by money grubbing media companies and cynically calculating politicians. As this process continues to spiral to ever greater confabulations there is a corresponding increased incidence of deadly violence perpetrated by right-wing gun toting fanatics and their fellow paramilitary cultists. What was once fringe racism and bigotry is now become the main-stream through the efforts of conservative pundits, soulless and power-hungry politicians and certain oligarchs who wish to transform our nation into a society of servants and a wealthy master class. None of that will likely happen, but in the process there will be people killed, insurrections and civil disorder. I believe that it ultimately will give birth to a more just, diverse and tolerant society since many of these intolerant conservative activists are members of the older generations. Those who believe and actively support racism and bigotry are on the wrong side of history, and that they, too, will be diminished and disappear over time.

So what does this have to do with the practice of magic? I have outlined a phenomenon that is happening now. It is a terrible object lesson of what happens to individuals and groups when critical thinking is rejected over emotional-cognitive bias and paranoid delusions. We are meant to be challenged at all levels, and we should try to meet those challenges with as high a degree of objectivity, alacrity, critical thinking and even some helpful peer review. If right-wing nut-cases got to talk to their relatives and community members who did not share their beliefs, and actually listened to them, noting that there are differences of opinion without a deviation from objective facts then they would probably have to loosen their rigid perspectives and realize that they are surrounded by people with a diversity of beliefs, but who share a common humanity. It is my hope that such a reconciliation does finally occur, but at times it seems like a forlorn one.

As ritual magicians and occultists, we must always walk a balanced pathway so we do not succumb to fantastical beliefs that have no basis in facts whatsoever. We see the various news outlets pushing right-wing fever dreams and we can observe what happens when people start believing in outright lies and propaganda over facts based on our shared social reality. This is something that we need to passionately avoid so as to embrace the unifying quality of empathy and compassion in all that we do. We are, after all, human beings, but that does not mean that we need to dispose of our common sense in order to obtain the temporary security of the mind-set of a cult.

Frater Barrabbas