350. Deliverance (VI)
We pray in order to create a void into which we can introject our will. This is the purpose behind intentional concentration. Various magicians—even old devils such as Aleister Crowley—describe similar techniques for void creation; but due to their umbrage at mainstream religion they neglect to mention that what they achieve through their magical operations is pretty much what people do in church every day: create a void into which a symbolic representation of what one wills is implanted, so utilising consciousness to achieve magical results.
It is a common observation that when it is imperative to complete a task—particularly tasks such as asking someone out, job interviews, or crucial shots in a competitive game—that we have a tendency to become dominated by performance anxiety. “I absolutely must not miss this shot,” we think. Conscious contemplation puts us right off: the chat-up line is muffed, the job interview sabotaged, and the shot missed. Prayer is a way to short-circuit the human tendency towards self-sabotage. We clear our mind through contemplation, put what we wish for into a non-emotional formula, and encode it in the symbolic form of the patron saint of football matches and then proceed with the task having “parked” the conscious worry and activated the unconscious parts of the mind that “just do it”.
Magic could be looked on as a means to activate the unconscious and so dragoon unknown resources into your activities. This is achieved through symbolic representations that transmute your desire into a desireless desire. So if you want money or love or health you pray to the symbolic representation of that part of the psyche—a particular saint or god—and this will activate those parts of the psyche that work towards what you want. It is no good saying, “I want £100,000”; but if you say, “Great god Ploûtos, grant me £100,000. Amen,” then you are on the way to desire without desire.
The times when I have actually got a girl, money, or other benefits have always been when I had no thought of them at all; then these things barrel into your life unexpectedly. The mundane explanation is that to want something desperately is unattractive and so repels women and money—desperation is weakness. Prayer gives you the confidence to be indifferent, at the moment of indifference you become attractive.
As you can see, the standard sceptical approach to prayer will never refute it because the sceptic looks for the wrong thing. They say: “Well, you prayed for £100,000 by next month and it has not materialised in your account. It can’t, can it? It defies the laws of physics!” Prayer for money activates those parts of your psyche not yet canalised to seek money, and this is magic; just as to pray for remission from cancer is to utilise the will to survive—a very real thing, anyone who has been near someone who is close to death knows there is a definite moment when they “let go” or “give up” and die shortly after. This is what prayer can aid; except most people with grave illnesses in today’s West are old and unlikely to want to pray for “more life”. The phenomenon of the elderly hanging on until their grandchildren are born then dying shorty after is well-attested and is another example of pure will.
Left-wing magicians, such as Alan Moore, and some priests will tell you not to use prayer or magic to ask for money, love, sex, or health. This is nonsense; people have asked for these things, as archeological records of Roman prayers show, for centuries. Christianity has moralised us; the ancients had gods to represent the relevant parts of the psyche to ask for help on all matters. Men like Moore, being leftists, want people weak to predate upon and so they tell them to renounce the magic and prayer that could make them strong—even though they use it for similar aims themselves, they hoard magic.