Occult Maxims for Everyday Life
One is all, and all is one. / As above, so below.
A summation of the Principle of Mentalism, the idea that the entire universe exists in the mind of God, and the Principle of Correspondence, that everything is inherently connected to everything else. I think this is probably the most important occult idea to remember as part of daily life. You are not separate from the rest of the world. You have an effect on the world around you, be it positive or negative. You can also deliberately influence the world in major ways if you choose to, by being aware of the ripple effects that your actions will have. Awareness of the interconnectedness of the universe helps to foster compassion and empathy. It also helps you to be more aware of the consequences of your own actions, so you can act more conscientiously.
Everything we see, everyone we meet, is caught up in a great unseen flow. But it’s bigger than that. It’s the entire world. The entire universe, even! And compared to somethin’ as big as that, Al, you and I are tiny, not even the size of ants. Only one small part within the much greater flow. Nothing more than a fraction of the whole. But by putting all those ones together, you get one great all, just like Teacher said! The flow of this universe follows laws of such magnitude, that you and I can’t even imagine them.
— Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Episode 12
This concept has a lot of applications within the occult sphere, but within the context of daily life, it mostly means “you get what you give.” You get back what you put out into the world. If you work to spread love and positivity, you are going to get love and positivity back in turn. Likewise, being angry, upset, or anxious all the time tends to result in self-fulfilling prophecies. The gimmicky “law of attraction” concept is based on this; I’ve written before that actually manifesting what you want in life is more complicated than just wanting it, but the basic idea of focusing on what you want instead of what you don’t want is still a good one.
A god suggested to me that whenever I get anxious about some impending doom, I should remember: “If I say everything is okay, it is.” This flies in the face of logic, which tells you that a person can’t simply command a hurricane or a war or a disease to stop. But anxiety is not logical. If I can state that everything is okay, and believe it, then anxiety and its impending doom will fizzle like nightmares upon waking. It’s the most powerful spell I can cast. And when I grow more practiced at it, who’s to say I can’t change reality with it? I create as I speak. If even one person sincerely believes that they can make everything okay by sheer willpower, then that is a step in the right direction for the whole world.
To Know, to Will, to Dare, to Keep Silent
This is sometimes called “the Witch’s Pyramid,” but the maxim predates Wicca. (I think it actually comes from Eliphas Levi, but don’t quote me on that.) It describes four required behaviors for every initiate. In the context of daily life, here’s how I would interpret them: To Know refers to knowing your shit. Pretty self-explanatory. Always do your research before drawing conclusions, and go out of your way to educate yourself whenever possible. Avoid speaking with authority on something you know nothing about. To Will refers to having an intention and the desire to follow it through. Know what you want out of life, and have the drive to get it. It doesn’t have to be a grand ambition, it can be as simple as the next step forward, or even something trivial. Keep yourself fixed on your goal, and believe that you have the power to achieve it. To Dare refers to stepping out of your comfort zone, and actually doing what needs to be done to achieve that goal. You’re never going to be able to accomplish anything if you’re too afraid to take a risk or use your imagination. You need some boldness in you to go on an adventure and claim the ultimate boon. To Keep Silent is the only one I take issue with — I do not believe that occult knowledge is only the province of initiates, and that everyone else is unworthy of it. That’s why I write about it on the internet. But I acknowledge that it is generally important to know when to speak and when not to speak.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
This one is so controversial that I actually left it out of the first version of this post, but I’ve recently acquired some insight on it. At first glance, this maxim seems to be saying “do whatever you want, consequences be damned.” That’s not how most occultists take it, but I’ve always had problems with the typical occult interpretation, “act in accordance with your higher self.” If that’s what it means, why not just say that? The obvious answer is, it’s Crowley’s maxim, and Crowley was potentially the edgiest person ever to live. But that aside, “Do what thou wilt” says more than it appears to. What “Do what thou wilt” really means is, “do what you actually want.” Not what you think you want, not what society or your parents or your partner or your peers say you should want, not what your religion says you should want, not what corporations try to make you want, not what you assume will make you happy. Do what you actually want.
That’s a lot harder than it sounds, because it requires so much self-awareness, as well as giving oneself permission to work towards one’s own happiness. As children, we are taught by the adults in our lives that our opinions and desires do not matter. As adults, our desires are manipulated by everything and everyone around us. You may think you want a shiny new sports car, but what you actually want is the social standing that you assume will come with it. You may think you want your partner to come back, but what you actually want is to not be alone. You may think you want a certain amount of money, but what you actually want is what the money can buy, etc. Figuring that out is an important step towards any kind of spellwork, because you will usually get whatever it is you said you wanted, and if it’s not actually what you want, then the spell can backfire. Practicing magic means being aware of what it is you actually want and then projecting that desire out into the universe so that it will manifest. On a day-to-day level, doing what you actually want will improve your mental health and help you be satisfied with the things you get out of life, instead of finally getting what you want and realizing that it doesn’t make you happy.
I’m going to add one, an occult maxim of my very own: See what’s there, not what you think is there.
That’s a somewhat complicated idea to explain, so I’ll let Terry Pratchett do it for me. This passage is from The Wee Free Men, in which an aspiring witch named Tiffany gets some advice from the kelda, the leader of a group of Scottish-accented Fair Folk:
“…Ye have the First Sight and the Second Thoughts, just like yer granny. That’s rare in a bigjob.”
“Don’t you mean second sight?” Tiffany asked. “Like people who can see ghosts and stuff?”
“Ach, no. That’s typical bigjob thinking. First Sight is when you can see what’s really there, not what your heid tells you ought to be there. Ye saw Jenny, ye saw the horseman, ye saw them as real thingies. Second sight is dull sight, it’s seeing only what you expect to see. Most bigjobs ha’ that. […] Ye think this is the whole world? This is a good thought for sheep and mortals who dinna open their eyes. Because in truth there are more worlds than stars in the sky. Understand? They are everywhere, big and small, close as your skin. They are everywhere. Some ye can see an’ some ye canna, but there are doors, Tiffan. They might be a hill or a tree or a stone or a turn in the road, or they might e’en be a thought in yer heid, but they are there, all around ye. You’ll have to learn to see ’em, because you walk among them and dinna know it.”
In this scene, the kelda explains that Tiffany naturally has the ability to perceive other worlds in a way that most people can’t. She can see plainly the weirdness that other people shut out because she hasn’t trained herself to ignore it. After reading this, I decided that “see what’s there” would be one of my rules of magic. Being a witch or magician means learning to see as a child does, with as few filters as possible.
So much of our experience of life is filtered by our perceptions, and our perceptions often “lie” to us. That’s not magical philosophy, that’s just a scientific fact. Color isn’t a real thing — it’s just the way that your eyes interpret light bouncing around. Light itself takes time to travel, so, the sun is actually displaced in time by about seven minutes. Light from the stars is displaced in time by millions of years, so when you look out into space, you are literally looking into the past. On a more mundane level, your senses are constantly picking up stimuli that you just block out or don’t pay attention to, because it isn’t important, and your brain can’t interpret it all. Memory is notoriously unreliable, and can even be faked. And the brain also can’t emotionally tell the difference between something real and something unreal, which is why we can get so invested in fiction. It’s also why a person can sincerely believe in something that is objectively wrong, and act as if it were the case. Deliberately altering one’s perceptions is therefore, on some level, manipulating reality.
The first piece of “see what’s there” is interpreting sensory information at face-value, as you would in a dream, without trying to analyze it. You’ll see more that way, and get less overwhelmed (I say, as if I’ve mastered this technique, when I most assuredly have not). That also means allowing for the possibility of things not making sense. You think you saw a water spirit out of the corner of your eye? Well, maybe it wasn’t a trick of the light; maybe you really did see one. You thought you heard a human voice calling you? Well, maybe it wasn’t just the wind. Pay attention, and don’t dismiss any of the weird stuff as you potentially being crazy. Maybe you are, and maybe you’re not, but that doesn’t matter right now. Going a bit crazy is kind of the point — a lot of those perception filters are in place to preserve our sanity. If you’re dealing with things that are weird, then you have to let them be weird, instead of explaining them away or trying to justify them.
The other piece of this is, if you are mentally deft enough, you can start to manipulate your own perceptions. It’s a common idea in Chaos Magic that belief is a tool, that one can just pick up and drop beliefs as it suits them to accomplish specific tasks. It’s not exactly easy to sincerely believe something on a whim. I didn’t use to think I could do that, but I’ve heard from people on the internet (mostly atheists) that one cannot deliberately choose to believe something, and I’ve definitely chosen many of my beliefs. If I can do that, then who’s to say I couldn’t change them on a dime? The only reason I can’t do that is because I’m emotionally attached to the ones I’ve got. Emotions are a whole other thing that I need to learn to control, because emotions have an enormous amount of influence over perceptions. For example, I’ve noticed that anxiety is a kind of glamour that makes the world seem much scarier than it really is, and tricks you into thinking that you need to make a snap decision to save yourself, when really, everything is fine. Recognizing that it’s a glamour is the first step towards dispelling it. I have to cut through the illusion, and see what’s there. Likewise with worry, which is often my cynical way of interpreting excitement — I feel like if I don’t get excited, then I’ll be guarded against disappointment, but the truth is that I spend so much of my life in a state of constant agitation. If I can change my state of mind at will, then I can put my mental state into a place that is more cognizant with what I want to have happen. And then, as per “like attracts like,” I can encourage or create that outcome.
Developing this kind of unfiltered perception isn’t easy, but it’s necessary for anyone who wants to practice magic. Just as stage magicians need to know the difference between what the audience sees and what’s actually going on, so occultists need to be able to distinguish between the reality and the illusion. As the Man in the Gray Suit puts it in The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, “People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told that they see.” You need to learn to be able to see things as they are, when you want to. To notice things that often go unnoticed, to be able to tell when other people are manipulating you, to just roll with the weirdness of life. See more than just what you want to see. Know how to dispel the illusions so you can be the one who casts them. See everything, the real and the unreal, and be able to move between both at will.
