Use it or lose it. The Magical Consciousness of man ebbs and flows as the need arises. In early man, who was a hunter gatherer, his Magical Consciousness ran high, as man needed an inordinate amount of "luck" to find suitable foodstuffs and shelter. Not yet fully able yet to learn and remember, man had to depend upon his instincts much like any other animal in order to survive. Man's third eye, which today is known as the Pineal gland, was wide open, seeing both this world and the world of his ancestors with great instinctual clarity, and he used it for magical purpose. To early man, magic was of great importance, as he used it to attract that which he needed to himself and to overcome his enemies whether they be marauding tribes or animal predators. Early man depended upon visions and dreams to guide his daily efforts and to direct him along the most suitable paths. Living as an animal, himself, with little or no wisdom or knowledge, man would never have survived without this natural, magical facility. You see, having no ability to keep track of the seasons and the times of plenty or the times of adversity such as brought by winter, man had to depend upon those ancestral instincts to head him to the warmer Southern climes in winter or the cooler Northern climes in summer. Follow the food was the order of the day, and instinct ruled.
However, man is a survivor, and as time passed, he learned more about his environment and the clockwork changes that came about as the planets whirled about the Sun in their accustomed orbits. Counting the Moons that waxed and waned in the night sky from the short days of the dead of winter, the wise ones eventually learned that always six Moon cycles passed until the Sun stood at the highest point in the Southern sky. And as the Sun in the South at meridian height is the beauty and glory of the day, so it is that six more Moon cycles brought back the frigid times of death and misery once again. The cycle was repeatable, and soon circles appeared upon the Earth with vertical standing stones to herald in each Moon cycle and the high and low points of the Sun as it progressed around the circle of life. And now you know more.
There was a trade off though. As long as man's third eye remained wide open and instinctual sexual activity ruled his life, man could not focus with any great clarity or facility on higher intellectual pursuits. In such cases, the Pineal gland was sloshing with Serotonin and drunk with the secretions of instinctual urges. But as wise men or shamans who were less sexually oriented for some physical or genetic reason became more common, the race of man began the long rise from the depths to the heights. The more you do, the more you can do. Such men became interested in more than base procreation and turned their minds toward learning what made the world go around. These shamanic men with less sexual prowess or interest, for whatever reason, also produced less Serotonin in their Pineal glands. And so it was that the less these men participated in sexual activity, the more their Serotonin dried up, and the smarter or more intelligent they became over the generations. It is impossible to focus properly on a singular event when the third eye is wide open. This holds true in current experiments with Jocks and lab rats alike... Perhaps that is why many religions and most sorcerers teach sexual abstinence-- it steals your power. Anyway, It was good to be smart, because intelligence equals power, but in closing our third eye, we also lost much of our magical ability.
That aside, higher learning and the acquisition of greater knowledge and the wisdom to use it became highly sought after, and the process of natural selection caused men and women of higher intellectual order to cleave and breed with each other, eventually producing even more individuals of greater intellectual power who eventually became the ruling class. They were bigger, stronger and smarter than the common individuals, and they brought about great changes in the way that men lived and interacted with their daily environment. But even so, the great men still turned to the witans, the wise ones when they wanted to gaze into the future or to ascertain the success of their proposed endeavors. Every Arthur needed a Merlin.
So here we are a million years later. We gave up much of our sexual, instinctual and magical abilities in exchange for the powers of reason. In most cases, this was a pretty good tradeoff to a point, but it would sure be nice to have both intelligence and magical ability at our commands. Not all of us need to be rocket scientists, and it is possible to strike a balance. Of course, this requires training and a measure self discipline. It is either worth it or it isn't. Each person must make their own decisions and set their own priorities, choosing what is best for them.
Such magical training over a period of time can reopen our third eye and allow us to see that which was lost. In other words, we can regain the Gnosis of the magical world if we work at it without losing our intellectual capacity. So, to what far away, mountain high, Tibetan monastery must we travel if we desire to regain our lost magical ability? Why, to none whatsoever. The knowledge has been here all the while if we just put it into practice. The teaching for regaining our magical ability has been passed down from father to son, mother to daughter and sibling to sibling for the last seven thousand years and is available right here on this web site. It is contained within the Seven Scrolls of the Children of the Black Rose. Wax on, wax off.
