Cultivate a Meaningful (i.e. Magickal) Worldview

If nihilism asserts the fundamental meaninglessness of existence: that the universe lacks inherent purpose or significance, then its opposite is something like eternalism, which posits that everything has meaning, because all points in time - past, present, and future - are equally real and exist simultaneously. The magickal worldview is therefore somewhere between eternalism and existentialism; in other words, everything has meaning, but meaning can be created by individuals. This is why self-sovereignty (see below) is essential to the magickal worldview: because without taking full responsibility for our existence, we are in no position to assign meaning to the things that comprise it. Assigning meaning requires authority.

The magickal worldview is an antidote to nihilism – and to its dour-faced relative pessimism (the belief that life is not worth living and non-existence is preferable), because it establishes the individual in a connected and inspirited cosmos, where all things have agency and all stand in relation to one another. We cease being desolate, disconnected and impotent, and become part of a vast, interconnected pan-dimensional web extending well beyond the confines of our physical body. The magickal worldview requires that we redefine our personhood and consider our ‘self’ in relation to our ancestors and descendants; our subtle bodies and the various realms in which we simultaneously exist; the non-human intelligences whose spheres of attention we intersect with. We are not alienated beings cut off from the world; we are far more profound than that.

Through magick we can participate in a great unfolding, aligning ourselves with the tides and patterns of an ever-evolving cosmos. Through ritual, we come into cosmic conformity; we become the cosmos in microcosm. And as mentioned below, self-sovereignty is a means of harnessing the mysteries inherent in the relationship between ruler and divinity. It requires the sovereign self to exercise ritual agency, thereby re-enchanting ourselves and the things we’re connected to. In turn we transcend the strictures of western culture’s toxic materialism. Ultimately, magick repudiates the world’s creeping nihilism by connecting us to the fundamental reality of existence, and to our inextricable bonds with Nature. It asserts that our actions have meaning and consequence.

Establish Personal Sovereignty

One of the great paradoxes of the modern West is its decoupling of rampant individualism from personal responsibility. The rights, liberties and happiness of the individual are insisted upon and exalted, yet those freedoms come with little or no accountability. This is partly a consequence of government and the state: the social contract explicitly requires its citizens to sacrifice freedoms in exchange for perceived benefits. But this increasingly creates conditions in which victimhood and grievance culture are legitimised; within which any kind of self-government is abrogated. It is also a function of the ‘web of convenience’ – the insulating consumerist layer that actively shapes consensus reality; it panders to our whims; it infantilises, and stunts personal responsibility. Through the web of convenience, almost every facet of life is deferred or outsourced to other parties. Meaningful agency is diminished and, for even trivial decisions, permission must be sought from the state’s bureaucratic machinery. It is not difficult therefore to argue for the modern nation state as a tool of governmental coercion and control. And with that loss of personal agency comes disenfranchisement and, ultimately, nihilism. We become denuded in every way.

One antidote to this imbalance is the notion of ‘self-sovereignty’, rooted in the pursuit of self-realization as a fundamental component of the Great Work, while recognising the magickal importance of accepting personal responsibility for each decision made. Gods and goddesses who bestowed upon human candidates the right to govern a land and its peoples was a phenomenon both ancient and widespread, bound up with traditions of kingship. But, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere1, our modern leaders are utterly undeserving of their station, being corrupt and self-serving. Legitimacy must therefore be transferred to us, the ‘citizenry’; we must become individually sovereign by consciously governing ourselves. This requires a fundamental step-change to the cosseting we are used to; an end to the deferment of responsibility and the apportioning of blame.

Incidentally, self-sovereignty does not equate with anarchy. It is not concerned with the exertion of power to obtain personal desires or the exclusive pursuit of self-interest. Rather, it requires directed agency: the careful custodianship of things within the purview of the self: our body, the land and Nature, and the people forming the communities within which we reside. We do this autonomously without the need or expectation of external involvement. It is a profound undertaking when done in ritual and with genuine magickal intent.

Create New Myths

Magick and myth are inseparable, because when we perform the former, we step into the latter. We magicians becomes mythic figureheads; the heroes who descend into the underworld or rise to the stars, who call upon creatures of myth – deities, zootypes, the ancestral dead, as intercessors and allies. In doing so we assert their reality beyond mere archetypes, as well as confirm the vast, complex, pan-dimensional nature of existence. As mentioned above, we are ineffably interconnected beings, intersecting countless supra-natural realms. Although most of us are unaware, a portion of our self inhabits the worlds of gods and heroes, and magick brings us into conformity with those worlds; through magick we become mythic beings.

Epochal models are fundamental to both magick and myth, because they simultaneously describe the cyclical nature of existence, and the influence of the spiritual upon the material. The Kali Yuga, the Age of Aquarius, the Aeon of Horus, the Aegean Civilisation, even the O9A’s Fifth Aeon, describe our current condition in the context of human evolution, and speak of the epochs to come as the wheel of myth continues to turn. Myths underpin the narratives of all the world’s religious and magickal traditions; by ritually re-enacting them (the consumption of bread and wine, the lightning of bonfires at auspicious times of the year), we become attuned to specific mythic currents and cleave ourselves to its divine figures. Myths shape our culture, our very worldview.

And, of course, by its nature, myth must contain both light and darkness; life and death; celestial and chthonic; good and evil. The sinister, nihilistic and misanthropic mythologies of O9A and its cohorts are just as valid as any other. But do we really need to inhabit myths whose chief objective is to accelerate the End Times (whether O9A or Christianity)? These eschatologies feed into modern accelerationist narratives around interstellar travel and the colonisation of other planets. But these myths about a prosperous, optimistic future have not come to pass. In our estrangement, confusion and desperation, we look for someone to blame.

The way things are going, as a species we’ll be lucky if we make it to Mars, let alone the wider solar system and galaxy. This is a good thing in my opinion. The sooner we discard myths of planetary escape, the sooner we can focus on preserving what’s left of the only planet we will ever inhabit.

The story of the Fisher King was Jung’s abiding myth of our time, articulating – through the Fisher King’s never-healing wound and its transforming of Nature into a Wasteland – humankind’s perilously imbalanced state. Jung’s view was that it expressed the toxic consequences of modern society's overemphasis on rationality and materialism: our collective estrangement from the numinous. But by restoring balance and harmony to ourselves, the inner and outer Wasteland can be healed. In the midst of environmental catastrophe, these are the kinds of mythic narratives we now need.

The so-called ‘left-hand path’ sinister narratives of deistic Satanism and anti-cosmic Gnosticism are of no use because, if the LHP is concerned with pursuit of personal fulfilment at the expense of all others, then the majority of the human-made world is a product of left-hand impulses. And look where that has got us.

Rather, we need ‘right-hand’ myths to bring us back into alignment with Nature and the cosmos – these are the truly revolutionary narratives. Even if the Anthropocene ends in collapse, we can confect myths that look beyond it to future aeons; post-Ragnarök myths that tell of Lif and Lifthrasir, and those who survived The End.

Be in Nature

I have friends who live in the city and never venture outside it. They’re happy enough bouncing between shops, bars, gigs etc, but rarely – if ever – get to experience that feeling of being completely alone in Nature, surrounded by nothing except non-human consciousness. In England, it’s impossible to stand in genuine wilderness unaltered by human hands; the entire country is one massive arboretum. Even ideas of rurality, landscape and countryside are relatively modern concepts, tainted by politics, class and nostalgia. Nevertheless, to be in a space that is unbuilt and unpopulated is an antidote to our dis-eased culture. It is to be in Creation, to be present in one small part of the cosmos. The more time we spend there the better; in choosing to do so we reject the hubristic notion that, as a species, we have transcended Nature; and we are briefly free of the cosseting effects of the web of convenience. Instead, we are allying ourselves with the non-human world and gaining balance; we are becoming enchanted, healing the Fisher King’s wound.

Working magick in harmony with Nature and the cosmos strengthens the self and protects it from the predations of toxic culture. In the words of the late, great Andrew Chumbley:

The Purity of Magic is found in Solitude amid the Glory and Wonder of Nature. Through this primitive fascination, which for many is missing or crushed by Society’s culture… can be found the fountainhead of Untainted Inspiration.2

Prolonged periods in Nature actively defend against the consequences of cultural nihilism; they exorcise the deep paranoia and conspiratorial thinking; the incomprehension; loss of control; alienation and disorientation.

It seems naïve to invoke the Stoics, but the reality of life means we must accept responsibility for, and focus primarily on, the things within our purview: our self, our sovereignty, the land and Nature, our networks of connection and our communities. These are the spaces where we can exercise influence and agency; where we can choose to make little Edens or Wastelands. Because the Grail will never be found amongst nihilists, misanthropes and psychopaths.

1

See Avalon Working pg 76

2

Chumbley, Andrew: Opuscula Magica Vol. 1; Three Hands Press (2010); pg 20