When I first started working with rituals, I realized I had a mental block or something preventing me from, or creating difficulties with, visualizing internally. At this point, I think had just spent too much of my life in a “scientific/objective” mindset. There were moments, especially in and around sleep, where I could close my eyes and allow shapes to form in the formless whirls of darkness, but it was very much untrained, undisciplined and frankly, lazy.
I got the sense from my reading that I should be able to do better. So I searched in the normal places people search for information, and found a few interesting things:
- Magickal Visualization Training – Work Shop – Part One to Five, copyright 2000 by The Church of the Hermetic Sciences, Inc. A very short (four pages) tutorial which includes specific exercises to improve focus and stamina for visualization. It’s not a skill that most people use or cultivate as adults, so it needs to be trained and exercised. Additionally, it gave additional references (texts to pair with the exercises) which I was also able to find in my travels:
- Initiation into Hermetics, Franz Bardon
- Magical Ritual Methods, William G. Gray
- Fundamentals of Yoga, Rammurti Mishra
- Raja Yoga, Ramacharaka
- Self Hypnotism: Its Technique & Use in Daily Living, Le Cron. This is quite a respected book on the topic, but quite a bit dated at over 50 years old, and contains some truly outlandish and easily disproven claims — that asthma, for example, is the result of a suppressed childhood cry, and that further, asthmatics cannot cry. There’s still some valuable info contained within, but it’s difficult to take it seriously as a whole with such claims.
- The Book of Solomon’s Magick, Carroll “Poke” Runyon
- Magick and Hypnosis, Carrol “Poke” Runyon: This one was a game-changer for me. As a lifelong skeptic, I struggled for a while with “why am I doing this when it’s clearly made up?” This piece helped me to understand that it’s not supposed to be about believing at face value. I knew this from my Crowley studies, but this took it a step further, explaining that what was lost in the Victorian era, when “objective” experimental study took over, was the trance/hypnosis aspect of the rituals, which is critical to the internal reprogramming which is real core of ritual work. Find it. Read it. Tell me I’m wrong.
- Creative Visualization for Dummies
This information takes time to digest, and the exercises take time to either take effect or not. At some point, I hope to follow up here on what helps (to improve visualization skills) and what doesn’t.