Thoughts on Magical Identity

Thoughts on Magical Identity

Frater Archer

I have written about some of my own liminal magical experiences elsewhere: my ten year training at Imbolc, burying myself in a coffin and encountering my Holy Daimon, crossing the Abyss and encountering many powerful contacts in the Inner Library. What I have never shared though is the following experience. I thought I might offer this up, instead of a list of books, as a slightly more personal gift to whoever has interest in it. I’d like to call out that it is not at all a special or highly ad- vanced form of magical experience. It is amongst the most humble ones, open to all of us, every night of our lives: a dream.

Suddenly, and I have no clue how it happened, my mind caught up with the events that had happened in these desert dunes before I had arrived there. I could taste the magic that had been performed here, just by touching these paraphernalia I could feel their previous work inside of me - and suddenly I saw the silhouette of their owner standing on top of the dune where I was standing at that very moment. Let me be clear: that person did not appear in my dream, rather my mind’s eye looked back in time, saw the man standing in my place, working his magic on the altar - and for a moment his and my figures began to blur.

Never in my life before or after did I witness something so powerful and evil. Even now, so many years later, recalling the presence of that magician makes me go all silent on the inside. I compare the ‘emotional imprint’ I received from him to e.g. the Nazi ancestors who lived in the country I live on now. And still - the unwavering readiness to work through, with, and inside the realm of evil of this black silhouette on top of the desert dune is beyond comparison. Most likely any attempt to compare is foolish in itself - for who is to tell that this silhouette was human on the inside? Anyway, I am not telling the story of this dream to resolve a mystery, but to make a point about how our journey of becoming can be traced back to few significant events. For me this dream was one of them.