In preliminary occult instruction I was given in the basics of operating in light trance meditation. The first step in this process is to ensure that one can easily perform a number of simple tasks all of which are a starting point from which our more complex trancework will develop. The fundamental tasks required to gain a working familiarity with are:

Deep relaxation.

The ability to obtain clear internal sensations from your five senses.

To see or feel your way around scenery in the astral.

To call up intelligent beings into your astral scenery at will.

To communicate with these beings confidently.

Many occultists are quite familiar with the kind of simple exercises that compose this early instruction and often refer to such as 'pathworking'. This is not a technically correct term for the type of work I had to become familiar with but it is used as a generic term, in the assumed absence of any other, for a whole range of astral experiences. Pathworking refers more accurately to those kinds of exercises that apply the technique of creative imagination towards gaining information and experience from skrying (scanning) a series (usually) of symbols. The term was used first, we understand, to donate visualisation of the astral environments of the paths on the Qabalistic of Life. These paths embody certain archetypal ‘activities’ that take place between major 'states' of consciousness. The usual method of 'working the paths' on the Tree of Life was to use the Tarot card attributed to each path as a starting point and focus for getting into the astral thought form associated with the activities of each path.

This idea of becoming familiar with archetypal experiences through astral work is, partially, the subject of this particular discourse. Once the student knows how to call up intelligent beings into a predetermined specific type of astral scene it is important for us to turn our focus onto two types of astral being in particular and explain their functions and their role in the scheme of occult training.

As we have learned our mind is divided into a number of compartments where specific activities take place. Between the conscious and unconscious levels of mind exists the subconscious where imagination, astral sensation, is active. Each human being possesses a personal subconscious field and a personal unconscious field both of which have connection to the collective subconscious and collective unconscious. Our personal versions of these fields of activity are microcosms. That is, they are miniature models of the collective, universal or macrocosmic mind.

The unconscious, as Karl Jung the psychologist re-discovered, is divided into a number of graded 'potencies'. These potencies originated with a single cause - separated, divided and extended themselves out to become the sum total of forces which are the unconscious. These potencies are what we now call the 'archetypes' of the unconscious. The term archetype refers to an abstract idea, force and form in one unit. The ancient Egyptians called these archetypes 'Neters', or natural forces, which English translators have used the term 'Gods' to describe. Gods, in the modern Christian influenced understanding of the term, is not an accurate translation of the Egyptian 'Neter' though. The English term carries with it too much corrupt religious connotation which the ancient Egyptian Priest who knew the subject deeply would not consider as accurate. It is true that the ancient Sages amidst the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts and so on, did have a sacred respect for the Gods of their understanding as well as a more technical/scientific, if you like, understanding. But it could be suggested without too much argument that the Initiated Mages of these cultures also possessed an understanding of the Gods or archetypes of the unconscious which was not too far removed from the 'Jungian' or modern psychological view point.

These archetypes, which the ancients treated as Gods, existing in the deep, dark, collective unconscious are, as we have said, are units of mind stuff which contain or embody an intelligent force focused around one idea. They exist in a hierarchy. They are living creatures. They are born, evolve and die over vast, vast periods of time. Their activities are, largely, habitual or automatic, almost in some cases instinctual reactions. To relate to an archetype personally is to know, feel and live under the influence of a form of dynamic consciousness which has a very powerful influence over huge areas of natural activity. The life, qwerks and evolution of an archetype effect the area of natural activity over which it rules like a powerful unseen dictator. For the average human there is no escaping the reflection of the effects an archetype has over their lives.

In another way we might suggest that archetypes are like invisible powerful natural laws that govern the ongoing progress of creation. These laws, these natural organic mechanisms, are not like mans laws which one can choose to obey or not according to ones desire. Natural laws, the effects of archetypal forces on creation, are inviolable. Nevertheless, although they cannot be ignored the degree of their effect on the human life can be transcended to some degree. In other words by taking our personal development into our own hands we can, by application of the proper techniques, rise above certain classes of natural law, or remove ourselves, to a greater degree, from the uncomfortable influences of certain classes of archetypal force. By this we can understand that a human at a particular level of soul maturity is influenced in specific ways by certain classes of universal archetypes strongly and almost not at all by others. As the human develops through his personal evolution during the process of reincarnation, his soul maturation brings him under the influence of new archetypal forces more markedly at certain times and out of the influence of others.

Lets now look at how these archetypes effect each individual persons growth and activities. As we have mentioned each human is a microcosm. This means that our personal unconscious minds have a model within them, in miniature, of the entire pantheon of archetypal forces, the Gods of the ancients. But because these archetypes are personalised they develop with each of us in very personal ways. Therefore modern psychology has termed these personal archetypes 'sub-personalities'. In other words they are divisions of the primary personality, the 'I' we each identify with as being ourselves, in just the same manner as the universal archetypes are divisions of the Supreme 'I' or the One God. For those who consider this fact carefully a great secret of being can be recognised here.

So we might now understand how the universal archetypes affect the personalities of each human. They do so through their corresponding sub-personality that lives within the psyche of the individual. For example, a woman who has just become pregnant has activated the subpersonality within her mind that is designed to govern the process of pregnancy. As her pregnancy progresses so does the life cycle of the sub-persona that governs the dynamic of that part of her life. Her 'pregnancy sub-persona' is like a seed before she ever begins to be to be exposed to activities and ideas associated with sexuality, conception, pregnancy and birth. That 'seed-form' sub-persona is like a little blueprint of what 'can' happen if she conceives. The seed-form inherits its blueprint from the archetypal pregnancy ideal, the Great-Mother Goddess of the ancients. As soon as the female in our example is exposed to ideas and activities associated with sexual intercourse the 'seed', the personal archetype or sub-persona, germinates and begins to develop. As soon as this happens the seed looses, in a fashion, its universality, its alignment with the macrocosmic archetype that gave it its pattern, and becomes a personal archetype. This effect comes about because as soon as our young girl is exposed to activities associated with sex then she begins to 'over-write' the original blueprint in the seed-form with her own version of the 'story' gained from her personal experience. A connection with the original pattern is never really lost, for it is always there in the collective unconscious, and our connection with it remains although we obscure it with our personal view of things. This whole idea is an important one to give much consideration. For everything we have been, everything we are now, everything we can be, is tied up in this mechanism as we have here described it.

A magickian is a magickian because the personal archetype he owns which governs all magickal functions is awake. It has left its seed-form and begun to develop. That type of magickal tradition he is attracted to is decided for him by the way his magickal sub-persona has developed in early life during its germination. It is affected by religion, by books, and by his parent’s attitudes to the subject, for example. It is affected by deliberate study and by information he absorbs unconsciously from his environment. It is strongly, for those more mature souls, affected by those magickal interests he has developed in past lives. We think we choose ourselves to be Alchemist, Witch, Satanist or Mage, but we do not. Our direction is bias towards or against those things the germinating seed-form magickal being has been influenced by.

Our personal view of things, that 'over-writing' of the Truth with our own experience, which we obtain so early in life when we are so impressionable, becomes all-important to us. It is the basis of our argument, or insistence, that things are the way they are 'because'. Very rarely do such arguments come directly from the universal archetype and therefore we, in our selfish insistence to defend our point of view, carry ourselves further from the Truth.

It is the vocation of magickal Initiation and Advancement to remove the 'over-writing' we have actioned on all our primary personal archetypes. To sacrifice our personal view of the universe in order to align ourselves with the Truth about reality. By doing this we destroy the 'blocks' which have cut us off from the Gods and once again we draw on their great inspiration and power and become the magickal beings we always were. Gods incarnate.

Understanding the above ideas we can now see, hopefully, the logic behind the ancient medieval practice of evocation and invocation. Invocation being the calling down of creative archetypal forces into manifestation, evocation the calling up of devolutionary forces up from the depths in order to communicate with and control them. It matters not whether such magickal rites produce physical or astral manifestations of the creatures they are focused on, which we read about in popular books. All that matters is that the communication is effective. We must understand and accept too that this practice as presented in typical magickal grimoires was not originally designed to compel 'spirits' to satisfy the selfish desires if the Magickian, but was a form of magickal therapy not unlike the creative imagination of Jungian psychology.

Either way, it is important to consider, that the practice of magick cannot be truly successful until the sub-personalities that are intimately connected with the arte in each of us are purged of personal misunderstanding that obscures the Truth. Therefore, deliberate and conscious effort is focused in our formal training on effecting this task before the more complex aspects of magick are taught.