To Will, To Dare, To Know and To Keep Silent.....1999

What exactly do these mean? And what roles do these four things play in ritual magick and spiritual development?

Dare means creative imagination manifest. Will means true spiritual resolve. Know means authoritative faith. Silence means discrimination and discernment.

To develop these things one must first study nature and seek the wisdom therein. Second, one must seek the wisdom of man in books and literature. Third one must seek to know themselves.

First we will be working on the most difficult of the four. Will. From childhood we have a natural imagination (daring), but we lack the will to use it in our adulthood. From the depths of our soul we have natural discrimination (silence), but we lack the will to enforce it. From our spirit we naturally have faith and hope (knowing) and yet we lack the will to keep it. As adults we negate our magical ability and the will to let it blossom. Our wills are left weak because of social and familial conditioning.

To develop Will, we must first determine what it is. Frank Channing Haddock, Ph.D. writes in his book "Power of Will" (1907 Pelton Publishing Company) that will is the soul itself exercising self-direction. It is the attentive guidance of our lives. Obedience of the mind or body to volition (willing power in action) exhibits the power of will. The will is not only a force in the mind, it is a power of persistent adherence to a purpose.

Will is manifested on the physical plane by a discharge of energy. The mind tells the body to perform an action or series of actions. The strong will is in full charge of the body. It can be shown in selfless and heroic acts that may put the physical body in danger. The willful mind scorns the idea "impossible" and makes it so. It can also be seen in a well exercised, healthy body because the mind forces constant or repetitive acts of skill or endurance. It seeks perfection, and is willing to undergo the training and practice to achieve it. Will is also manifested by persistence and restraint. It is decisive and yet explosive.

Here is the paradox of will: the will is the soul’s power for self direction and yet the soul must decide how and for what purpose will power shall be exercised. A developed will brings about wise and intelligent resolutions. Intelligent resolutions given energy and expression bring success. An undeveloped will brings latent fantasy, disappointment and unresolved desire.

A person without power to decide what he shall do is not a complete organism. Animals in the wild have great will power because they do not limit their own will power. People often limit their will power and make it weak. They still have freedom of will because that state is a choice they themselves have made.

Diseases of the will include lack of passion or overabundant passion, lack of focus on tasks or focusing on one task to the exclusion of others, inability to decide, lack of perseverance, inability to use time wisely, lack of confidence or severe over confidence.

Just as a person can choose to limit their will power, so can a person chose to increase their will power. Charles Leland wrote: "Now the man who can develop his will, has it in his power not only to control his moral nature to an extent, but also to call into action or realize very extraordinary states of mind, that is faculties, talents, or abilities which he never suspected to be within his reach. All that man has ever attributed to the invisible world without, lies, in fact, within him, and the magic key which will confer the faculty of sight and the power to conquer is the will.

Training of the Will

Will power can be trained by cultivating memory, imagination and reason. Lower forms of exercise in bodily movement prepare the way for the higher exercises. The path of least resistance is obtained by basic repetition; in other words, learning the best path for movement comes through experience. Skill is gained and a task becomes easy.

Training the will involves exercising the perceptive facilities, widening the ranges of emotions, controlling the emotions and developing reasoning skills. To develop these skills, one must cultivate deliberateness, bring intuition into control, and foster moral character. One must examine motives of behavior and destroy forces of habit.

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One of these days I'll finish this essay.. it was started some 9 years ago... long long ago and far far away... in a world when I was actively teaching and priestessing. I wrote it after reading the above mentioned book "Power of Will". (now available online to read) It was written in 1907, way before theosophy and self help books. I liked it because it focused on deliberate self mastery and observation. A Mason friend of mine gave a hard copy to me as a gift after also recommending Manly P Hall's "Secret Teachings of All Ages" (1928) which is now available online. I adore that book and have the hard cover version of it with the large black and white plates. It's a lotta' fluff and stuff... but still a magnificent accomplishment of writing for the time period.

As I recall, Power of Will also made me think a lot about the act of drawing, for drawing is about perception as well. Learning to percieve, to see clearly, to understand the curve and value of an object, increase awareness and master spacial relationships was all touched upon. It was one of the first recourses ever to bridge the gap between art and faith for me. Maybe when I get done playing with my mother's recipie cards, I'll start up on reading it again.
-Aggie

What kind of Wolf are you?

In the Neo-Pagan world, we often like to think of ourselves as Wolves amongst men. It's easy symbology coming straight from our Christian surroundings. They like to think of themselves as sheep being guarded by the shepherd. Christ is shown in art as a youth with a lamb over his shoulders. What exactly does this mean?

Domesticated sheep are very scared herd animals. If you frighten them too much before slaughter, it actually spoils the flavor of the meat. They do best in large groups, grazing safely with a human companion and some trained dogs. They look up to the shepherd to keep the wolves away. They have few natural defenses. In essence, they are dependent.

Wolves on the other hand, work as teams and families hunting. They have complex social structure. They are constantly using their intellect to survive a world that hunts them down and shoots them. They don't have an all powerful God watching over them in protection. They are the true meaning behind "God helps those who help themselves".

So... where am I exactly going with this?

This is where sociology and constructs come in. Constructs , simply put, are ideas in our heads about how things are-- our group version of truth. Everyone does it. My sociology professor had some really interesting things to say about that-- and I am going to very loosely quote him here, because I'm remembering it from several years ago:

THE FIVE KINDS OF PEOPLE:

#1- They don't know society is a construct, and they are happy living in their construct.
#2- They don't know society is a construct, and they are unhappy living in their construct. They never figure out why they are unhappy.
#3- They know it's a construct, and are happy to live in it. They've found ways to excel in it and manipulate the construct to their liking.
#4- They know it's a construct, and they think it sucks. They find ways to survive in it, they cope they best they can.. but they still hate it.
#5- They know it's a construct, think it sucks, and fail miserably at surviving in it.

What kind of wolf are you?

Obviously, #1 is a sheeple. They are ignorant, stupid and easily pacified.
#2 is a sheeple. They are ignorant, stupid and never learn from their mistakes.
#3 is a wolf. They are educated, in harmony with their environment, and masters of their domain. Possibly an Alpha.
#4 is wolf. They are observant, not always in harmony with their environment but do what they must to survive. They are likely the lower ranking wolves in the pack.
#5 is wolf. They are that dumb ass wolf who gets kicked out of the pack and thinks he's a stud because he's "lone wolf". This is that loner who's chances of survival in the natural world have just been cut in half because he can't hunt in a pack, he has to fend for himself daily and makes chaos for himself. You know know this type.. we have a million of them in Neo-Paganism. They reject society, the reject anything they deem "yuppy", they reject anything that will make them an honest living and help them survive. Dude. If you're here.. you're just as bad off as Sheeple #2. You could learn from your mistakes, but you just have too much resentment to move on.

This brings up dependence, independence and co-dependency-- three issues I'll talk about a lot in my quest for tightwaddery. There's a reason they call it "financial independence". It's the way of the Wolf. It might just be the way of our Goddess as well.

Aggie