16. Learning About Magic

 

Some of the things Ridge taught me, I learned by example. For instance, since becoming a psychic reader myself (a story I’ll tell you later), one of my methods of reading for people has been to clasp their right hand in mine, close my eyes and tell them what then comes into my mind – as Ridge habitually did when reading for me. (I find it effective; so do my clients. But it required a huge degree of trust when I started, to actually open up like that and then to say what I got.)

Some other things he didn’t exactly teach me, so much as acquaint me with the fact that they were possible. For example, when I came to encounter hands-on energy healing, I already knew that it existed and could work, having witnessed him use it on our dog Suey. I wasn’t afraid of it, nor dismissive of it, which I might otherwise have been. (Many people are.) Since then I’ve received hands-on healings myself, from gifted practitioners whose treatments I found helpful; and there came a time when I was guided to learn Reiki (another story to tell in more detail later). I went on to become a Reiki Master, i.e. qualified to teach it myself, and have worked with it for around four decades now.

Mostly, he responded to my fascinated questions about how he became a magician and what sort of things he did in that capacity. 

It was immediately clear that it was an absolute commitment on his part, something he took seriously – not just a game, or hobby, or passing interest, and certainly not a way to deceive people for his own advantage, nor big-note himself. It wasn’t a thing he would normally mention to people at all, but our renewed friendship had soon come to include discussion of things decidedly out of the ordinary, such as my ghostly visitors. He probably had good intuition as to who he could and couldn’t tell. I think, too, it must have been clear that I had a genuine curiosity and a thirst to learn; I wasn’t just a sensation-seeker.

Not that I was seeking to learn as a student; such a notion didn’t occur to me. I saw myself as an interested friend, wanting to understand what his life was like now, as well as to explore a mysterious topic.

He told me he was a Hermetic magician, meaning one who was a follower and pupil of the Egyptian god Thoth (who was equated to the Greek Hermes). There were written teachings which Ridge had been studying, known as The Emerald Tablets, purportedly authored by Thoth. Ridge did not regard himself as in any way slavish, but rather as a respectful friend to the deity – considerably less learned in the matters Thoth had to teach him, but of equal value as an autonomous being. 

To me it was as if he opened up my perception to a whole world I had been completely unaware of until then. (Not quite true, but since my early childhood I had suppressed and forgotten a lot.) How did Ridge come across the knowledge of all this other-worldly stuff in the first place? 

Well, he had recently made a new friend: a man who was a witch. Ridge opened up to him about his clairvoyance. This man introduced Ridge to various of his magically-inclined cronies, including one who was both a powerful clairvoyant and a trained Hermetic magician. One story about this magician concerned his having been charged with ‘fortune telling,’ still illegal in Australia at that time,. He was required to attend court to face the charge. One reason fortune telling was illegal was that it was assumed to be deceptive, undertaken in order to gain money by ‘false pretences.’ The story goes that the accused defended himself on the grounds that he wasn’t faking it, and proceeded to tell several people in the court room, including the policeman giving evidence and the judge himself, what they’d had for breakfast that morning, in detail so accurate that his case was thrown out. 

A great story! Was it true? I don’t know, but Ridge certainly believed it, and by then he had had a lot to do with the accused man (and with others who confirmed the tale), so presumably he had reasons for being so convinced. 

Finding himself among the like-minded, people from whom he didn’t need to hide part of himself, Ridge embarked eagerly on a program to correct his ignorance and develop his gifts. He was drawn more to ceremonial magic than to witchcraft. (A quick and easy way to differentiate is to say that ceremonial magic is more formal and structured; witchcraft is more earthy and organic. However, it’s a generalisation: there are similarities and overlaps.) So began his intensive studies in magic, and his personal relationship with Thoth. 

At this time I had no notion of becoming either a witch or magician myself; the whole realm of magic seemed to have no personal application to me, being rather a source of interest and curiosity just because it was so foreign – like learning about a different country. When my mum was visiting, she too was interested, in that same kind of way. Ridge didn’t have all the long talks with her that he did with me on my own, but he was still able to be entertaining on the subject. (I realise with hindsight that he gave me more specific and more private details – he must have been teaching me purposefully, even while not letting on that that was what he was doing.)

He actually took Mum and me to his home one day, to show us his magic room. I wonder now if I should I call it a temple. Perhaps … but anyway, it was one small room in the townhouse he was renting. (All the rooms were small.) It was pretty much empty. What was striking about it was the circle of thick white rope taking up most of the floor. There was just enough room to choose to stand outside the circle – which is what we all did, as he made it clear that entering to stand within the circle was not to be done without his permission. In that inner space, various kinds of magic happened. He didn’t, on that occasion, go into detail about this; merely mentioned ‘ritual,’ which to us was a fairly vague term. We felt honoured to have been shown the room. It was not something he allowed many to see. The rope, though usually left in place, could be lifted and hidden away if necessary (for things like landlord’s inspection, I imagined).

Eventually he told me (but not Mum!) that he sometimes worked with demons – that he could summon them into the circle, which trapped them, and they would then have to do his bidding until he freed them again. This shocked me! In all the years since, it’s not a thing I myself have ever done or ever wanted to. He explained that magicians had to be able to work with both ‘light ‘ and ‘dark’ energies; that both are necessary in order to maintain balance. I can comprehend that; I just don’t choose to act on it in that specific way. 

I think we only have to look at Nature to see that it’s obvious we need both day and night, heat and cold, and so on. In similar vein, I think it’s important to love and integrate one’s own ‘shadow’ in the psychological sense. For whatever reason, we do seem to need the familiar extremes, and need to balance them. So I think that if some being exists, even what we call a demon, it probably has a right to exist. It’s not up to me to judge it, trap it, coerce it or hurt it – unless in self-defence. 

(When it comes to self-defence, protection seems to me easier and more efficient than attack. So I do set up magical protections around myself, my home, my pets, my loved ones – whether against natural events such as severe storms, or against intentional malevolence from a human or other source. It’s completely matter-of-course by now, second nature. I tend to believe that I’m not a very fearful person these days, but if I stop to think about it I have to laugh at myself. I might fairly be considered VERY fearful. The reason I don’t feel afraid is that I have such a heck of a lot of protection around me at all times!)

I believe it was from Ridge that I first heard about the four basic precepts for working with magic: ‘To know, to will, to dare, to remain silent.’ As I understand it, this means: 1) You need to know what you’re doing, which means undertaking enough study to understand in detail how magic works, and more specifically the particular magic you’re proposing to do; you don’t just go in blithely on the basis of having a mere scrap of information. 2) You need to have and maintain a strongly focused intention. 3) Be brave enough to do whatever it takes and face whatever consequences. 4) Talking about it weakens and dissipates the energy. Furthermore, it could be dangerous! In ancient times you were likely to be tortured and killed even for suspicion of using magic. Even now … in my lifetime, I have known of people losing their marriages, their jobs, and access to their children, for the same reason.

He also explained that what you put out will return to you. Again, it’s an energy thing, just the way things work: a natural law. That’s another good reason to be very mindful about trying to work magic. You might not like its after-effects on you! Witches call this the rule of three, or ‘law of threefold return,’ on the theory that what you send out will come back to you multiplied by three. That’s usually a bit hard to measure; also there’s no saying when it will come back to you (though it’s usually quick). The important thing is that it will come back. By now I have had many occasions to observe this law in action. (It doesn’t apply to cases of unintentional hurt. Those might of course have consequences too, but it’s not the same dynamic.)

These are widely known precepts in magical circles, in both ceremonial magic and witchcraft; since those days, I have encountered them repeatedly. I think they weren’t unknown then, either (in the 1980s). But at that time I personally had never come across them before.