On becoming a magus

This is an answer regarding the update of Protesilaos' post "The way of the wizard", written after seeing, as a perfect representation of the death of magick, the priest of the local parish in secular person clothing smoking a cig walking on the street.

The magician, in the tarot world, is represented as someone in robes (Jesuschrist) able to control the four elements: air (swords), fire (wands), earth (pentacles) and water (coups). He is shown displaying these things in a table, in calmness. 

Tomberg is his Meditations on the Tarot, expounds about this topic and how occultist like Eliphas Levi said that Jesuschrist was the ultimate magician and that the rest of us mortal wouldn't ever be more than warlocks. 

I am a firm believer of the phenomenology of magick; as a christian it couldn't be otherwise; Solomon had control over demons (or djinns), Elijah called fire upon the prophets of Baal, and my dear St. Theresa D'Avila levitated and mastered the inner self out of abandonment and trust; centuries of grimmoires have been preserved to this day, like the Lesser and the Greater Key of Solomon, the entire tradition of the Ars Goetia and the book of Honorius to talk with God amongst other tests. 

I consider that everything is real when it comes to this kind of topics: I do not deny the existence of Hera, but her condition; for me it's just a fallen angel or a nephilim instead of a goddes, and the same goes with the gods of my ancestors - Baal is just a minor nephilim, or son of the angels that left the sky.

This being said, my very fist post was referring to this kind of magick (which also covers conection with nature and knowledge of our environmet i.e. herbs or when to go outside to catch a fish). 

Nonetheless, mastering the self is a key element to achieve this flow state -to surf the Kali Yuga- where the magician can flourish, and this is a point even shared by esoteric practitioners like René Guénon, and I agree that discipline and systems have a very important role in said development.

Still, you are trying to master magick as one would master an addiction, and sheer force of will won't work here.

At the first part of your post, you were creating systems and ways to carve yourself a safe haven, and there is nothing wrong with it, in fact is the most sane and plausible option we have nowadays to try and make life bearable, but it has a limit, because action without purpose is dead from it birth.

As an expatriated bird, even the magi has to find a way to bear the dullness of existence.

I do know that me being elegiac doesn't solve anything, but I also think that we should take our time to value what we've lost before system our way out of it; no mater how disciplined I become, how much I pray or go to mass or even sacrifice animals in a Moloch, that won't solve anything and only will put pressure upon my shoulders, making me feel guilty about a systemic issue.

Reaching for the ancient, for the unknown, for the fundamental truths linked to the One True God, has been part of the human nature since our birth as an specie. We yearn for the divine, we strive for control, for understanding, and through the systematization of every process, the racionalization of every issue, we resolve that everything is a war we have to fight on our own; that it is our sole responsability to restore what was taken away from us, that magick can be mastered, understood and systematized. It is a lost war, if you ask me.

 As a son of the scorching sun, my issue is different: I am hevily attached to the land of my ancestors; I know some of my past and my roots, I have the generational effort and sacrifice very present, and what I strive is to preserve the essence of the dying earth I was born into, to retrieve the truth that the past generations have and build something anew, a fatherland for me and my descendants.

For the mystic to bloom, for the magi to appear, for the wandering healer to  come amongst our communities, we need to believe, and through said belief and actions according to it, create prevailing conditions for those events to happen.

It wasn't until Elijah surrendered under the juniper tree and asked God for death that the angel came to feed him.

I hope that tomorrow doesn't look as gray, that the herbs that I will burn at home will haunt bad spirits, and that the shrine of the holy souls, the same that my ancestors visited, will listen to my prayers and protect me and my loved ones.

For the magi not only needs discipline and knowledge, but also trust and faith, faith in something greater than himself, faith in a world that can't be reduced to debt and GPI and politics, faith in the fact that, as Borges said, there are more things.