MAGICAL THOUGHT CONTROL:

>In a being who has become alive, the mind is no longer "thought." Rather, it is activity that instantaneously determines reality through images. Through images the magus creates, destroys, and transforms into matter feelings
and sensations that are within himself; through images he acts on his own organism; through images he operates on other people. To the material actions and "will" of ordinary people he substitutes the power of the image.

>But in order to do so, it is necessary to awaken oneself to timeless speed in feeling, conceiving, halting, and intervening. The ordinary, slow, obtuse, and sluggish consciousness usually manages to perceive things at the speed of a sleepwalker. Acts escape it; consciousness opens its eyes only when the "precipitate," the "fallout," of the fact (the thing, the sensation,
the material movement) is already there. Thus, what consciousness perceives are the shadows of phenomena and a world of knowledge as acknowledgment, but not of action (magic).

>In this sense you also understand the world you call "inner" as being of external phenomena and lunar; thus, you do not know and live the image as action, but as image. Its action is too fast, and you are not present in it. A mere echo, the image either "appears" by itself, or it may be simply "evoked." You do not know the creative relationship through which it could
act from deep inside yourself (Latin imago ["image"] = imo ago ["1 act from
the depth" ]).

>In order to acquire and perceive this rapidity of what is not yet "physi- cal," the mind must succeed in wresting itself free from the organ of the brain. The necessary condition for this is to "descend into hell" — that is, from the head into the "heart," as we have mentioned before. This is also the "bath" that breaks the chains of "gold" and frees it.

>You already know that this "descent" leads to the perception of the "subtle" and the "volatile. ' But the "subtle" is the second dimension of reality — in which reality is no longer exteriority in space and time, or discursive thought, but rather activity and rhythm. Then you are "reborn backwards." No longer hypnotized by the spectacle of things and ideas, you can detach
yourself from them and perceive them in the act of their prenatural birth.

>However, this is a consciousness in which the image is transformed into a projection, or into an action in the pure state. Will is effort: desire is the tendency toward something that one does not have; the force is a middle
point between a goal and a reality into which it tries to be transformed by overcoming a resistance. In the magical image, on the other hand, there is no effort, nor striving, nor an interval of fulfillment: it is acting that amounts
to seeing, and a seeing that amounts to acting. The process of ideation is
realization ipso facto. It does not have a future, and it is more rapid than
the antithesis: its law is it is — the command-presence.

>Through images you can successfully stand up to feelings and passions, whenever they descend upon you, a struggling ascetic. If desire, fear, anger, sensations, hatred, lust, all of a sudden appeared in your mind, in your feeling and will, jump back and fix the feeling in an image: act upon it and the mental act will produce transformation and annihilation in the corresponding element.

>Assume in a flexible way any thought or image of negation, mistrust, distraction, or that you simply do not wish to entertain; immediately imagine a hand pulling out a splinter that has pierced the skin and casting it away. And if the element has already penetrated and sapped your strength, get rid of it "as a strong man, seizing a weaker man by the head or by the shoulders, compels him, crushes him, throws him down. " If a pain, an illness, or a sense of fatigue overtakes you, fix it in a flake of snow that melts when it falls on a mass of glowing white-hot metal. If any anxiety restlessness, desire, or mental fever attack you, turn them into the shadow of smoke that, in the fire of the mind, is dispersed in the pure, clean, blue sky. The mind is fixed through the image of a fist that holds a little defenseless animal, until it stays still, motionless, inert; or through the image of an arrow shot at its target; or that of an ever-present iron bar that always parries every blow; or a hand that systematically grabs and leads the un-
stable mind, which runs away every time an involuntary association of thoughts arises, back to its proper place (at the center).

>In order to free the mind, imagine the open sky, the air, or remember that "[like a deep, clear, and transparent lake, this is how the wise become calm" (Dhammapada, VI, 82); or that "[a] 11 desires flow into him as waters flow into the ocean, which, ever-filled, never overflows but remains unchanged" (Bhagavad Gita, II, 70); or "Like a lamp that shines unmoving in a windless place' 7 (VI, 19). This last image can be represented through determination by imagining a flame that is still enveloped in smoke and mobile, in which
a state upset by modifications that have not yet been dominated is eventually fixed.

>About all this, be aware that first of all it is necessary to stop a thought or a feeling as soon as it emerges. It must be caught in midair, before it puts down roots in your soul and spreads there; you must prevent it, suffocate it while it is still in embryo. Become agile, elusive, ready to detach and extract yourself.

>Everything depends on the rapid and complete amalgamation of sentiment and image, and on the active attitude to be maintained before the image. The entire mind must be concentrated on this image, as a bundle of solar rays is gathered up in the focus of a lens.

>If you persevere in these practices you will grow in the knowledge that thoughts and feelings are not incorporeal and "spiritual," floating in the air, but rather almost tangible moving objects, which can be handled, moved, projected, changed, put down, loaded and unloaded, each one endowed with its own form. This form can be seen and derives from the "sign" of the being that emanates those thoughts or feelings.