Where is the Muse? Finding "magic" for me is about finding a place or a "muse" that will energize the creative flow. When I said, "For us moderns, who have dispensed with folkways for paved streets and central heating, I don't think there are any short-cuts back [to places where there might be fairies]," Murrah took issue:
It is not a matter of "short-cuts back," since it is all around us all the time. All we have to do is ask to see it and be willing to see when it is shown. The fairies are always there, and they will always work with you if we let them. Sounds simple and strange maybe, but it is true, just ask them and they will respond.
Hmmm... maybe the fairies and the muses are crowding in around me, but if I can't sense them, what good are they? What's the trick to accessing them (other than a measured dose of hallucinogens)? The following is from the biography of Aleister Crowley, explorer of creative magic:
The keys to attainment within the magical tradition lie in the proper training of the human psyche itself -- more specifically, in the development of the powers of will and imagination.
The training of the will... is the focusing of one's energy, one's essential being.
The imagination provides, as it were, the target for this focus, by its capacity to ardently envision -- and hence bring into magical being -- possibilities and states beyond those of consensual reality.
The will and the imagination must work synergistically. For the will, unilluminated by imagination, becomes a barren tool of earthly pursuits. And the imagination, ungoverned by a striving will, lapses into idle dreams and stupor. [Lawrence Sutin, as quoted in Paul Bowles, Magic, and Morocco. Emphasis mine.]
Crowley also used a lot of drugs...
8:02:06 AM 
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