Everyone was famished and cleaned their silver plates one or more times. Chatting together in Merlin’s library was really a pleasant way to past the time (pun intended). Plus, everyone was feeling the subtle effects of multiple glasses of honey mead–no one was tipsy, but, everyone felt wonderfully settled, at home, and minds clear, sharp and focused.
Rav mused to himself, “Funny, no one said a word about the magic of Wonderland and Camelot. In our world, they would have been shocked. I will have to explain this later. When we are in a dreamtime world, we attune with the basic structure automatically.”
Eventually, Merlin tapped his goblet with his knife to produce a series of musical notes doubling in frequency from the first ring note at 256 Hz or Middle C. As the last harmonic died away, Merlin began with Chatelaine’s question.
“Chatelaine, my dear, such a question is much more convoluted than most people in your world realize,” began Merlin.
“For example, I am well aware that a large percentage of persons living in your world swear that departed spirits, angels, demons, elementals and other creatures of ancient mythologies assuredly exist as distinct creatures who are composed of special energy-matter, or psychoectoplasm. Unfortunately, claims made for the manifestation of such creatures has not been adequately verified by neutral parties studying the details of such reports. Moreover, most believers have not personally experienced similar occurrences. This is a real problem, Chatelaine.
If we survey the demographics of this population, we discover a number of common subpopulations, e.g., dyed-in-the-wool occultists, hopeful spiritualists, schizophrenics, psychotics, fantasying personalities, a few parapsychologists, primitive cultures, and little children. The list may sound pejorative to members of such groups, but, this is not my intention as you will come to see as we continue. My point being that the psychoneurological systems maintaining such beliefs arose early in your evolution and are the default mode of the normal human brain. As the default mode of your psychology, it makes sense that it would be most prevalent in psychiatric disorders involving the temporal and parietal lobes of the brain.”
Merlin paused to allow questions. He had noticed that one or two of his guests seemed a mite antagonized by his comments and so needed further explanation.
Alphonso raised his hand and Merlin nodded in his direction. Alphonso asked, “Merlin, could you explain in more detail. I did study occultism for a few years with a magician and he evoked some entities in my presence. They seemed real enough, though, we could not actually touch them. Doesn’t this suggest that these mythical creatures are real enough?”
‘Jolly good, my boy. You have touched upon one of the subtle complexities present within the fullness of Creation. A complexity which is not recognized by many occultists and so is most confusing. The confusion arising from the ‘crossing-over momentarily’ into another state of perception, a different conscious awareness, than you normally inhabit when in your waking state. What I mean by this, is that when an occultist invokes an elemental or other creature in your normal physical universe, such creature does not appear within your waking world, rather, an image seed appears within the dream awareness of the operator. I know it is complicated and requires further explanation.
I am sure Tristan has explained the difference between waking and dreaming realities. In order to successfully invoke an angelic creature using a magical ritual require that the participants in the ritual have highly developed occult imaginations. That is, they must be excellent visualizers capable of externalizing an internally generated ‘form’ onto the physical surroundings. As they work to visualize said creature, the evolving visualization molds itself to the silent seed form already existing in their subconscious minds. So what manifests, if the ritual is successful, is the seed form which already existed therein.
Such a form, in and of itself, is no more than the creation of a positive hallucination. Positive hallucinations may be static or active. A common static form for an occultist would be a flaming sword. An active image is present when the imager can interactive with the invoked item or personality. People can interact with such positive hallucinations without being occultists. It happens automatically in psychoses and with medical hypnosis in fantasy prone subjects.
What most occultists fail to understand is the power of magical ritual for inducing a state of hypnosis or trance. A hypnotic state is characterized by greatly enhanced concentration, richer mental imaging, suppression of background information, and the feeling of actually being present within the world which was invoked by the facilitator. In truth, when someone enters into a hypnotic state, he or she has entered into his or her dreamworld–be the eyes closed or open. Moreover, if one studies the intricate design of magical rituals, one finds they are excellent hypnotic inductions useful to bring a seed form from the subconscious into the conscious which brings the feeling that an invoked person, spirit, or angel is truly present.”
Merlin paused once again for questions.