Methods of Visualization

Everyone dreams. Therefore, everyone has the ability to visualize. The skill may be acute in some and weaker in others, but the talent itself is necessary for survival. Without the ability to visualize what will happen if you step off a high cliff or venture into a bear’s cave, a human has little chance of living long enough to reproduce.

The dream state during which visualization occurs is dominated by alpha brain waves. There is certainly enough literature available on alpha that further exposition of the basic principles involved would prove redundant.

Alpha is the subject of much serious psychological and medical research, and I recommend that your reading on the subject include the more technically oriented material in addition to the general information available in the more popular literary forums like New Age magazines and elementary psychological texts.

Just as a medical doctor would not limit his professional reading to generic accounts of health problems from Readers’ Digest, so must the witch seek knowledge from the highest sources. You will never find such efforts to be a waste of time.

While achieving alpha is not only easy but inevitable during sleep, reaching the same state while awake is more difficult, since brain activity is dominated by beta waves when the mind is engaged in the everyday activities of gathering and processing sensory input.

The alpha waves (and others) are still present, but they are given a lower priority by the brain as a matter of survival. Imaginary dragons are far less dangerous than the bus that is bearing down on you at fifty miles an hour while your brain works out which way to run.

The first step toward increasing alpha wave dominance and enhancing visualization is to quiet the beta mind by removing as many sensory stimuli as possible.

While most of us do not own sensory deprivation chambers that would allow us to disconnect our minds from sensory input, it is still possible to achieve a similar effect by finding a quiet place where we will not be disturbed.

This does not mean you must locate the perfect environment for meditation before you can ever hope to improve your imaginative skills. If this were so, most of us would never meditate at all, let alone improve our talent for visualization.

The brain does not require conventional silence to recognize that it is in a place that will permit it to let its beta guard down and allow alpha waves to dominate mental activity. What the brain recognizes as quiet are circumstances that do not provide variation in sensory input.

The beta mind is attuned to recognize change and react accordingly. If the senses detect no change requiring the mind to respond, it quickly becomes bored. It is exactly this state of boredom that results in a reduction in beta activity, permitting the alpha activity to take priority.

This is why so many methods of meditation rely on repetition of a word (mantra) or action, like counting breathes, to help practitioners to calm themselves and reach the desired level of mental relaxation. Mandalas function in the same way on the visual plane, replacing the multitude of changing visual stimuli with one that remains constant.

These techniques can also guide the practitioner toward a particular direction that the meditation is intended to take, such as personal pathwork,

Otherworld journeying, or they can be used as a means of targeting energy for healing or any other purpose. Shamanic drumming, which seems anything but calming to the novice listener, uses insistent repetition to induce the trance that helps the shaman to move from this reality into that of the Otherworld.

Gregorian chant and hours of prayer recitation serve a similar end; the quieting of the mind that it may be in harmony with forces other than those of mundane existence. If you already employ a method for meditation that enhances your ability to visualize, do not feel obligated to adopt mine.

Simply follow your own path to arrive at the point described in the exercises that follow. What is important is that you expand your skill to the degree necessary for magic and ritual. Some Eastern schools teach meditation as an end in itself, and the benefits of these endeavors with regard to personal health and well-being are well documented.

The major difference between disciplines such as zazen and transcendental meditation and those explained here and in other Western magical texts is that the goal is to provide a tabula rasa with which to conduct magical work or upon which information from the Otherworld may be written rather than to achieve a state of “no mind” as a means of reaching nirvana.

Both involve the exclusion of the endless chatter of the beta mind to produce mental piece.

The first step in developing the Imagination is to be able to visualize a familiar object and gradually add detail to it until it bears no particular resemblance to any of its “real” world kin but takes on an individual identity based on attributes endowed by you.

 Start by putting yourself in a meditative state where alpha waves dominate the brain’s activity. You can use the same method outlined in the exercises on Will, picturing a place that you find especially relaxing and mentally transporting yourself there.

One advantage to this technique is that it acts as a warmup for the further visualization you will be attempting. Its disadvantage is that it assumes that you already possess some talent for visualization.

 A simple method of reaching alpha is to close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing until it becomes quite slow and regular, with no hitches during inhalation or exhalation.

Once you have regulated your breathing to the point where its newly established rhythm does not require your full attention, proceed to empty yourself of all worldly cares and physical tension by giving them a form you find comfortable to both contain them and permit their ready disposal.

Rocks are very useful for this chore. Holding a rock in your hands (real or imagined), mentally endow the stone with any problem that might be bothering you, no matter what it is, and drop the rock from your hands.

Try to see the rock falling into a pool of very deep water, even if you are dropping a real rock from your hands to the carpet in front of you. Feel free to place as many difficulties as you like into the stone. You may want to start by holding a number of rocks in your hands, particularly if you feel you have widely divergent troubles that would be hard to confine to the same stone.

As the stone breaks the surface of the water, be sure that you are getting rid of that problem or set of problems so that your tranquility cannot be disturbed by such thoughts. You may wish to use a brief banishing charm to help you, or you may recite to yourself one of some antiquity that activates water’ natural ability to absorb and hide anything, “Water bind it, no one find it!”

When you have disposed of the last of your troubles in this manner, know that you are now pure and ready to use your Imagination without fear.

 If you can, picture yourself bathed in white light and feel it cleansing you inside and out. See the world around the light encompassing you as being shrouded in a deep fog. You can make out no features.

Everything is hidden by the fog that raps you in a comforting blanket. You cannot see past the fog, but you have no fear of what may be out there because both the light and the fog that surrounds you are like a warm coat on a cold night. The fog is gray. As you strain your eyes to see through it, the fog turns a beautiful crimson all around you. Your whole world is a velvety red mist. This is followed by the fog becoming orange, as richly hued as the most delicious fruit. Just as that color is about to manifest as a taste on your tongue, the fog changes to a brilliant yellow that possesses all the warmth of the sun. As you bask in this sunshine mist, the color turns to forest green, complete with the musty smell of Spring woodlands. The scent fades as the green fades to sky blue that seems at once to be all around you and to go on forever.

This brilliant blue resolves into the deepest indigo you can imagine, a perfect blend of royal blue and purple that reminds you of an evening sky’s horizon, touched by the last light of the sun. As you watch, the purple seems to take over from the blue, turning the fog to sharp violet, a color almost beyond your perception, edging past the upper limits of the visible spectrum.

Sit and enjoy until you feel ready for the next step. Without any special effort, allow this violet landscape to fill with the white light that has surrounded you.

See the light expanding until there is no more color but brilliant white that disperses the fog, leaving a world brightly lit but without features. This world is where you will create, for in this world, you are the Supreme Being. It is you that has brought light to the Void and will fill that Void with your creations. This universe obeys your laws, for you are Law personified.

To return from your private universe, reverse the above process, first recalling the white light to yourself and your immediate surroundings. Then picture the fog returning, this time starting as violet and turning stepwise to each color in reverse order until you are enclosed in red. At this point, mentally remove the color from the fog, leaving the gray blanket that you began with around your body which is still enveloped by white light.

Dispel this fog and see in front of you the pool into which you dropped your stones. If there are some that you feel you must retrieve from the water, do so at this time (some problems do require that you deal with them on the mundane plane and should be taken back with you when you leave the meditative state. If you tossed your worry about paying the phone bill into your magic pool, leaving it there may result in your forgetting to pay it altogether!).

If this does prove necessary, provide yourself with a positive affirmation that you will be able to handle the problem by saying something like. “I take with me my trouble, but my trouble will not take me.

By my Will, I’ll find a way to make this trouble go away.” Before opening your eyes, ask the white light to stay in you until you can travel to your world again, “Stay within me, Sacred Light, as I return to the world of day and Night.”

Open your eyes, feel refreshed, and get something to eat or drink to ground yourself(this is a good practice after any ritual or magical operation that involves travelling between the Worlds. It is very easy to remain floating in a mental haze if you don’t do something to drop anchor upon returning to port.) The next step is to begin to fill your universe with occupants.

Start small, with something that does not require a lot of detail that can lead to disturbance of your alpha state. The beta mind has a long evolutionary history of responding instantly to any stimulus and will welcome the opportunity to participate in measuring the exact dimensions of your castle in the air while at the same time making it vanish in a puff of intellectual smoke.

 It is usually wise to select for initial visualization something that appeals to basic human needs, like food. (Sex is a basic human need, yes; but it is also fraught with complications that are a bit too stimulating for the novice.) It is best to pick something whose name is a bit vague and open to individual interpretation with respect to its exact appearance and physical properties. Start with something you like for a number of reasons and endow your mental image of the object with the attributes you like best. The more senses you can involve in your visualization, the more vivid will be your image and the more “real” it will become.

Again, food is a good choice, because you can tell when you’ve got it right when your mouth begins to water, and you return from your little alpha vacation with a terrific craving for that food. You may want to be sure you have some on hand before you begin.

Rushing around town trying to find chocolate covered strawberries at four in the morning is not conducive to mental balance! Suppose you pick as the object of your exercise an orange.

Once you have reached the alpha level by performing the aforementioned exercise or by your own method, picture an orange floating in front of you. Turn it round in your mind until you know its every feature. Note its color. Smell it. Toss it up with your mind and catch it the same way until you have a good idea of its weight.

Turn it on end. Is it a navel orange or a Valencia?

Does it say Sunkist on it? Is its surface rough or smooth? Does it have any blemishes? Squeeze it gently to gauge its ripeness. Does it feel full of juice? Does it have any bruises? Note that until now you have been allowing the orange to exist on its own, letting each of its properties come to you through observation.

You have created the orange, but it demonstrates the characteristics of an orange on its own. The more things you observe about the orange, the more real it becomes. You are a benevolent creator, permitting your universe to go its own way once you have provided it with the basic rules of existence.

Congratulations! You have achieved Godhead. It is not at all necessary for you to dictate every detail of the orange for it to exist. “As above, so below.” The Universe owes its creation to the All, but it lives its own reality and contains infinite possibilities for how its existence will unfold.

Thus, with God, all things, good and bad, are indeed possible. Enjoy your orange as completely as you like. When you are ready to return from alpha, allow the orange to drift out of sight until your original blank fog is all that remains.

Count yourself back to normal consciousness and ground yourself, preferably by eating an orange. When you next et an orange, try to recall the features of the orange you created and compare the two.

 Note these comparisons in your log. You will need them for reference following the next phase of the exercise. Proceed with this exercise as you did the first, including visualizing the orange. However, this time you will deliberately endowing your creation with every detail of its existence.

For each attribute you noticed in the first endeavor, enhance your orange with your ideal. Make the orange as orange as you like. Make its smell absolutely irresistible, its touch promising juicy delight. Know that it is the sweetest, best tasting orange you have ever seen, free of blemishes and descended from Olympus itself rather than Sunkist.

When you are sure have the perfect orange, savor its beauty for a while. Let your mind become convinced that this fruit has had no equal since the beginning of time. This may sound grandiose, but bear with the plan. When you have tired of this example of citrus perfection, return to the conscious state as before, leaving your orange to its own devices.

Ground yourself as usual. The next orange you eat should pale in comparison to your creation. The world does not produce perfect oranges, it grows real ones, complete with all the flaws inherent to existence on this plane. Do not be disappointed. You are learning the difference in what you might seek through ritual and magic and what results you may actually get.

One important principle of all magic and ritual is that all things have an existence unto themselves within their universe, and any change you would make in those circumstances must function within the nature of that existence and not in spite of it. A true grasp of this law requires careful examination of the law Hermetic law of cause and effect.

Chance is merely undiscovered cause. All things happen because something else has happened first to direct that it be so. The kind of visualization needed to work magic falls between the two extremes of these exercises.

You will want to project upon the screen of your mind the circumstance you wish to achieve with all the detail that you can to insure that your operation is a successful one. You must, therefore, be able to determine what limits you will be working with to avoid attempting to force Nature aside.

There is no more direct path to disaster than to place yourself above Universal Law, and you have to realize that your perception of anything is inherently flawed by the limits of your faculties and that these limits are not a sign of weakness to be overcome but are essential to your own existence in the Universe.

(You cannot see Otherworld beings, but you know they exist. Think of what it would be like if you alone could see them. Try to explain swerving your car into a ditch to avoid hitting a dragon to your friendly neighborhood cop!)

To use visualization to work magic, first learn the nature of the situation you are attempting to influence.

Learn all you can about what may have caused the present circumstance and how far you can alter those circumstances while remaining true to the nature of the situation. Healing spells serve as a perfect example of the type of magic that is often performed in contrast to Nature’s plan.

While healing is always a good and right thing to do, it may not be suitable under all conditions, no matter how badly you may want to help. Living means dying. All biological organisms fail eventually, even those as seemingly immortal as the ancient redwood trees. The human body deteriorates with age, sometimes through the painful effects of disease.

There is no harder thing than to watch helplessly as a loved one passes from this life. As witches, we are tempted to try anything to postpone the inevitable, and our own feelings of impending loss can overcome our faith in the continuity of the spirit and reduce our sensitivity to the pain that life is now bringing to our loved one.

Magic is a powerful tool, and its effect at the hands of a skilled practitioner can usually hold off Death for a while, but such meddling can cause terrible pain to the very person you are trying to help, so severe that it may reach beyond the body and tear at the mind and spirit.

This is not to say that you should throw your arms up in hopeless resignation whenever a nasty illness descends upon someone you care about. You are a WITCH. The name itself implies wisdom. Use yours to know when fight and when to let go.

Death has its place and time, just as do all the events of our lives. You will find that working against the forces of nature provides no reward and minimal success. If you choose to fight the tide, be prepared for hard work and know that should you succeed in that particular operation, a counterbalancing will come as surely as the sun at dawn. Be prepared to duck the pendulum’s swing.

Nature will return to equilibrium. If that means you must suffer some consequences for your actions, steel yourself against them, avoiding those you can and enduring the rest without complaint.

Practice the exercises for Will and Imagination as often as possible. As your muscles need repetition to perform in a coordinated fashion, so does your brain. You are walking neural paths that are very much like seldom used trails in a deep forest. You will be hacking your way through many barriers, some as thin as cobwebs, others as formidable as deadfall and strangling vines.

 Be patient with yourself, and know that no one travels these routs without difficulty. How quickly you reach your goal is far less important than that you clear the way thoroughly for future travels.

 Concentrate on removing the blockades, not on circumventing them. Heed the advice of those whom have traveled these roads before, and always be attentive toward help from the Otherworld.