"The feeling across the facility is palpable, you don't need any kind of rapport to pick up on it. Have you had the chance to study it more closely?"

"We pulled in a number of personnel for a supposedly routine psyche examination then built up a rapport with them and observed objectively what was occurring."

"First comes a feeling of uncertainty, of fear and nervousness. Then a number of memories associated with that feeling begin to play below conscious awareness. Then comes a need to find where the feeling is coming from, which I believe is essentially a basic orienting response. This can rapidly turn into a focus on unpleasant feelings, and a constant re-playing of unpleasant memories, which may then bleed into behaviours and situations as arguments, misunderstandings and distrust."
"Unless the pattern is stopped it can soon become habitual."
"I shall say for the moment that in my opinion the accidents across the facility are the result of distraction or fatigue from poor sleep rather than anything deliberate."

"From the perspective of the magician paradigm we are basically looking at a kind of thoughtform, in esoteric parlance a 'servitor', which consists of some kind of un-resourceful feeling which can accentuate self-destructive thoughts and actions. This thoughtform has insinuated itself into the general psyche and social dynamic of Phobos Labs."
"The servitor appears to be exploiting and exaggerating any tendency at all to dwell on unpleasant events or memories in order to create an emotional link with it. Once that link is established behavioural modelling will mean that Lab personnel will begin to copy the basic structure of the thoughtform. In essence it's like a mental virus spreading it's mental DNA, if you like, from host to host."

"I suppose then that we've all noticed a number of old issues coming up again. Old grudges, unresolved anger, guilt, insecurities and so on."

"But whereas we'd have the training to do something about it - to break the cycle before it starts to loop back on itself - most of our personnel would not."

"So the ideal solution would be for everyone in the base to have a full psychological review and to be fully trained in all extant psychological and magical paradigms. The more realistic option would be to run cut-down versions of our training courses for all Phobos Personnel, and to screen any future employees for suitability."

"Maybe we can start off with some courses on maintaining a solution-based approach, in building a positive self-image and perhaps some coaching on replacing prominent un-resourceful mental movies with more resourceful alternatives."

"My suggestion is that we explain away all this as a stress-busting exercise. We can say it's necessary due to the extra work from the new dig site or our current financial uncertainty."

"Okay. Do we need to try to educate personnel in the magician paradigm?"

"Actually I would advise against it. Involving people with magic who don't have a good grounding in the psychology behind it may actually backfire. People may obsess over the idea of some evil spirit after them and suddenly every mistake, every oversight that previously would have been shrugged off now gets blown up to supernatural proportions. Leon and I will do whatever needs to be done in the way of official banishing and so on, anything else would need to be more mainstream psychology."

"Earlier we used the metaphor of this thing being like a virus. Is there any chance of it evolving in some way as it moves from host to host?"

"I think the term 'develop' is probably more useful to us. As time goes on it will develop a kind of group identity that will make it harder to shift. Probably that's all. The thoughtform will only 'evolve' as such if we begin to treat it like an intelligent and ruthless opponent, if we ourselves give it entity. So far it has shown no sign of being anything more than a loose structure of connected bad feelings. I advise that we maintain this stance."

 

Source: Phobos Lab 2 Report

Intercepted: Friday, 10th of March

Stele 7 initial translation

The first stele recovered from the lower Dig Site 7 area.

This stele speaks of some character or concept, represented by the symbol, that is the 'Lord' or 'Ruler' of the following: Obsidian. The void. Space. Quiet and stillness. Unyielding presence. The night. The desert. The mountains. Objectivity. The eternal Now. The quiet still place. All Matter. It is described as being at the center of all space, impossibly large, with 'world-views' (or realities?) orbiting it. It is also at the center of the planets, and the center of 'all things that can be touched'. The symbol represents the point of stillness from where you can move in any direction - The immovable object from where an unstoppable force may be projected.

The stele explains that if your movement and expression in a direction has been tainted, corrupted or is in any way unhealthy, invoking this 'Ruler of Obsidian' is a way of allowing the slate to be wiped clean, a way of getting back to the reality of the actual experience rather than getting lost in expectations, memories and habitual behaviours thrown up by some association.

An example is given of a 'false ruler' who uses aggressive means to 'push your buttons' and has established a relationship of being in the dominant role. Here you would call into yourself this essence ('fire/spirit/serpent'). This would allow you to speak to this person without being automatically, habitually, drawn into their power game, the dominant / submissive game. You could then re-establish new rules for your relationship.

When this influence is cleared, you can then work with the appropriate aspects of yourself to develop this area of your life.

If you are in an unpleasant situation and you have a positive and appropriate resource to resolve the situation then great. But if not then you shouldn't have to run away to prepare a new resource for a few weeks and then come back. The Lord of The Void represents the ability to just 'be', to face any situation with a total calm resolve, from a centre point. And thus to create new resources 'on the fly', to go into a new situation and do the best you can to the best of your gifts. This is the ultimate "shield". You are just totally invulnerable to any covert personal influence or manipulation. You just ignore it.

 

Source: Phobos Lab 1 Report

Intercepted: Saturday, 11th of March

In the research and practice of the so-called 'Magician Paradigm' a number of questions crop up on a regular basis. "Do we really have magical powers? Are we really creating our own reality? What does it all mean?"

To get a proper grasp of what is actually going on I find it useful to approach this issue by contemplating the following three scenarios.

Meaningful Co-incidence

Consider a situation where the telephone rings. You answer and are amazed to find that someone who you were just thinking about has now rang you up.
What is this? Telepathy? Precognition?

This is actually a perfectly explicable phenomenon known as 'The Law of Large Numbers'. This Law states that in any sufficiently large and complex system (such as the Universe) seemingly 'impossible' co-incidences will occur and re-occur with a regularity depending on the size and complexity of the system. The Universe is pretty large and pretty complex.

Or to put it another way: if you spend time occasionally thinking about people, and occasionally these people call you on the telephone, it's only a matter of time before the two co-incide.

Recognising Opportunities

Consider a situation where you have just read an interesting article on a certain make of car. When you next walk out into the street you suddenly see one of these cars, and then another, and another.
Does this mean that you have created a universe where more of these cars exist? No, more likely is that they were always there, but you just didn't notice them until your attention, your focus, was directed at such.

Life is full of opportunities, full of chances. Chances to do something new or to stay the same. Chances to remind yourself to feel happiness or to feel sadness. The exact nature and scope of these opportunities depends a lot on your life at the moment (as described in Ophiel's Sphere of Availability ).

They are there, but do you notice them? And are you propelled to action by them?

Use of magic can be seen as simply one more way to focus your mind upon success and happiness, so that opportunities that could reinforce this same success and happiness are 'noticed'. If the visualisations are done with emotion and made to feel desirable then they will also provide an impetus to action, helping to organise resources like feelings and body language.
And thus hithereto unseen opportunities are recognised and taken.

Opportunities from beyond our model of the universe

Whilst the above two notes are useful for helping to make sense of some of the experiment outcomes, the temptation can be to believe that they allow you to 'understand' it all.

It's clear from some results that magic can produce situations that seemingly violate our understanding of how the world works. The key here is not to see the end result in the 'superstitious' way that use of the term 'magic' would imply but to recognise that magic could be working in quite simple and easily explicable ways - it is just that our model of how the world works is too limited to yet recognise what is going on.

Given the self-fufilling nature of this subject, it would appear that you may inadvertently limit the capabilities of magic by believing that it must work within certain parameters.

By way of a conclusion, I'll say that in order to get the most from a study of magic a number of different mental 'standpoints' are required. You need an 'anything is possible' viewpoint whilst actually operating inside the paradigm, but also a more sceptical and objective viewpoint for goal-setting and results appraisal. The ability to move cleanly from one to the other is crucial.

 

Source: Email

Intercepted: Wednesday, 22nd of March

To: T O'Quinn
From: L Romanov
Subject: Reply: Thoughtform Shielding

I've spent some time thinking over this problem of 'shielding' against psychic manipulation and I suspect that if you are trying to build a servitor as a protection against these things then you may be causing more harm than good. I'm not sure. Myself I have been focussing more on how it seems to easily bypass these esoteric 'shielding aura' exercises. I've noticed that no matter how intricate or fancy a shield is, if there is a backdoor in then the shield is useless. On the other hand if this 'backdoor' is closed up, then even a simple shield will be sufficient. It seems to me that any such psychic attack needs to find or create something in yourself that has the same 'wavelength' to allow it to bypass the shield, or it needs a 'connection' (depending on your metaphor). An awareness of where your emotions are directed, the pictures you run in your head and whether your thoughts are problem or solution oriented would be a first step in sorting this out. You might also find it useful to investigate language patterns that other people use, as this is also a way for things to get into other peoples heads.

The Circle is the primary esoteric personal shield. It's common to perceive the Circle as something 'out there', a spatial metaphor which allows the rather ridiculous possibility of someone penetrating the Circle by simply walking up to you! I think it's of more use going forwards to consider the Circle to be something inside. The Circle outside, the line of cord or visualised energy is a ritual or focus for the intent - the statement of Will that you wish to exclude any pernicius and disruptive influences from your mind and body system. This intent and Will, the source of the ultimate Circle, is internal. Of course if anything internal does not agree with this then your will is not total, and the Circle degrades in effectiveness immediately.

For example, consider some old unresolved anger or guilt. And then consider a person or situation that can trigger that feeling by reminding you of it in some way. A certain look or tone of voice might be all that was needed. Such anger or annoyance would have an emotional base and an external target, which qualifies as a link that mental imagery can be transferred across. If guilt or fear were triggered, then this might impact your self-worth and personal belief in your ability and right to defend yourself. In both cases the Circle has been breached from the inside.

Leon

 

Source: Email

Intercepted: Saturday, 25th of March

To: J White
From: T O'Quinn
Subject: 'Magician' Paradigm notes

I was fascinated to hear that you'd be starting work on the magician paradigm. You'll enjoy it I'm sure. Below are some of the various notes and ramblings that I've gathered over the years. They should be useful.

Of course I can't state with any certainty that you must adhere to these guidelines. I can only say that while it's clear to me that some people have ignored these guidelines and met with success anyway, it's equally clear that others have met with some ignominious (and avoidable) end. Best to err on the side of caution in these matters I'd say.

Although the following notes were written with their primary focus on the possible pitfalls of adopting the 'magician' belief structure, the general concepts probably have relevance to any sort of attempt to create willed change, in self or general reality.

Start with what works - and stay there!

There are so many people with their own paradigms; magical systems based on TV shows, Role-Playing Games, trading cards. Some, apparently, are even based on ancient mythology.

The danger here, with so much to see and explore, is that you could become like a kid in a toyshop; continually being distracted by the bright and colourful things you can do, and not actually get anything done. If you just want to dabble and tinker around then that's fine.

But if you want to get results, to make real and positive changes in your life, then my advice is to get together a basic magic system, pick a simple target (learning to get on better with someone, learning to play a musical instrument better), then use your system every day for 21 days. If you get a result then that's your system and stick with it!

Once the positive changes from your various enchantments have taken on a clear permanency and momentum of their own, when your life has changed beyond all recognition from what it was, then that is the time for experimentation and improvements to your system, not before!

Habitual Persistence is key

Get into the habit of doing a 'working' or visualisation every night. Avoid constantly monitoring reality for evidence that your spells might or might not be working. Just 'be' - get on with your life and let your spells work in their own time and own way. Set aside some time every week that is specifically for thinking about the results that may or may not have appeared that week and thinking about possible alterations to your magical desired outcomes. You can either live your life or think about it - get the balance right.

Also whilst some sources claim that 'good magicians' should only need to enchant once and then their self-belief will power them to success, I consider that sort of view potentially delusional, especially for beginners. If an outcome is worth enchanting for, then it is worth spending 30 minutes every night for a month to get it!

Involve a process as well as an outcome

Some traditional exercises for 'visualisation of a desired outcome' involve vividly imagining yourself in a situation in which your desire has already come true whilst affirming to yourself with all the belief and emotion in the world that this desire is indeed a universal truth. My experience has been that this is a potentially dangerous technique.

Let's suppose that Magician X is enchanting to turn himself into a sparkling conversationalist. He might imagine himself surrounded by people who hang on his every word with rapt expectation whilst repeating "I AM an interesting person" with every ounce of his power. What might happen to Magician X? There are a number of possible end-results:
a.   A part of his mind (correctly) rejects the assertion, because it is, at this moment in time, actually totally incorrect. This internal incongruity shatters the unity of will required for good magick and nothing happens.
b.   Magician X's ego becomes so attached to this target self-image that his unconscious is forced to reject any negative feedback that might contradict his new perception of reality in order to protect his ego. The spell thus becomes a delusion and he begins to live in his own little reality becoming increasingly estranged from other people. He believes that he is interesting but no one else agrees with him!
c.   Magician X goes out the next day and engages someone in conversation. This other person just gives him a weird look and walks away. Magician X's new self-image collapses instantly when faced with this failure - he spends the next few weeks in depression wondering why he bothers with magic anyway as it never seems to work.
d.   Magician X's mind, the soldier that it is, manages to integrate the new self-image and generate new behaviours and skills whilst simultaneously avoiding the various ignominious ends from the above options. The magic works! Magician X finds himself the centre of attention as a rapt crowd gathers around him!

My tip in this respect is simply to include a rephrasing of the affirmation so that it becomes part of a process rather than a simple statement of desire. So you have the imagery which represents your target state being supported by affirmations in which you say, "I can learn, REALLY LEARN, to be an interesting conversationalist" in addition to the standard "I am really interesting" target statement.

Reframing 'failure'

When you've put a lot of time and effort into your magic it can be disappointing when it doesn't appear to have done anything, and sometimes this disappointment can spill over into frustration and depression.

The best thing to do here is to enchant yourself with the belief that failures are the universe's way of telling you that you could be doing things in a better way, and that you can then quickly move from disappointment into a pleasant state of curiosity about just how you could be doing things better.

It might sound twee, but that is such an empowering and useful belief to have.

Remember - stay solution focused!

Do Proper Goal-setting

Many of the books I read used to say that all you needed to do was to enchant for your ultimate desired outcome and then the universe / your higher self / magical pixies would sort all the details out for you.

My experience has been that this is largely incorrect. Your magic will create a situation from which your desired outcome is possible but if you don't have the necessary personal resources to take advantage of this opportunity (or even to recognise it!) then it will pass you by.

Do a step by step analysis of where you are now and where you want to be and what personal resources (beliefs / skills) you will need to make the most of these opportunities. If necessary break down the overall outcome into smaller 'missions' and get them done one by one.

If you are operating inside a particularly friendly magical paradigm then it's quite possible that you will get some sort of feedback about what it is about your resources that are lacking. In this case you must be vigilant for this feedback and be ready to act on it, no matter how unpleasant the truth about your personal skills might be.

Self-change: the enchantment that keeps on giving

Most popular spell-books I've seen are crammed with spells that focus on you creating an effect in the 'external universe.'
Yet there are so few that have anything at all on improving yourself. In my opinion the ability to improve your own skills or to generate new empowering beliefs can potentially be far more useful than an ability to change bits of the universe.
Improve your ability to do a profession or a hobby, to communicate well with people, to be creative, or sexy or cool - or all of the above!
If you improve some aspect of yourself, then that improvement will be there, working for you, for the rest of your life. As the months and years go by you may find even the smallest changes can eventually alter your life radically, just as the famous butterfly may eventually create a hurricane.

Additionally: spells that improve your self are also good for measuring the effectiveness of your magic. Choose an outcome. Spend 30 minutes each day every day for a month on the enchantment. If your abilities haven't improved then you're doing something wrong! Back to the drawing board!

Choose a positive paradigm

Personally speaking, I would never use a magical system that consists of entities that are hostile or even indifferent to humanity. The Cthulhu Mythos and Goetia spring to mind here. Given that magical paradigms often seemingly take on a life of their own my advice would be always to stick with paradigms that are pro-humanity.

Be Honest with yourself

There was a nice 'model of the mind' in a book by Paul McKenna (Change your Life in Seven Days) that basically said that we have three selves. We start off with an 'Authentic Self', which is what we should be, how we should act as a mentally and emotionally healthy human being. As we grow up, however, a layer of insecurities, negative self-judgements and generally dis-empowering beliefs and views get attached onto us. This becomes our 'Negative Self-esteem' self. The story goes that often we are so terrified that people will find out these negative things about us that we have been programmed into believing as being true, that we build up a façade, a public persona, a 'Pretend Self'. The drive to get a bigger house, a faster car, more cash (etc) can be traced back to this desperate attempt to cover up the Negative Self-esteem Self.

Magic could be an awesome tool to banish the Pretend Self, unravel negative self-esteem and to start living authentically. Sadly, though, that's not always what happens.

Most obviously the 'glamour' of being a magician can become part of the Pretend Self, where mysterious and mystical behaviour is used to cover up inadequacies.

A somewhat less obvious, but more dangerous, threat is to magically boost the traits of your 'pretend self' with the intention of burying your negative self-esteem beneath a super-powered façade. Unfortunately this approach only increases the level of internal conflict and is a sure-fire way to give yourself a nervous breakdown!

My advice here is to create an acceptance of how the past may have affected you in negative ways that are not your fault, look objectively at any dis-empowering beliefs (especially problems with self-worth that can themselves sabotage magical results) and use magic to resolve them, not cover them up!

Keep Map and Territory distinct

Be aware that 'being a magician' is a paradigm that does not necessarily match the reality of how the universe works.

Be guided by your own experiences of practising magic, how it reacts and what actually works rather than what you have been told that magic 'should' be about. Challenge your own assumptions about what magic 'is'!

If ever you think that you've figured out magic, that you know what magic 'is', then that is the day that you stop learning and the day that you shut your eyes to the wonders and mysteries of the world.

Good Luck!