A tapestry and a failed transmission. In the layers you will find fake nails, 3 fingers, and trees and flowers in a city that stays warm through winter but is slowly degrading in spite of lush appearances. History claims its victims slowly. a gate. Subtle too subtle...but one can never be too subtle.
"I only bet on my skills against the skills of other people"
- from Lucky You
the magician doesn't just pull a short con & walk away. or they do, but that's not the big picture. the big picture is that the magician lives whole 'lives' in character, for the con.
finesse it.
the magician defeats their opponent by giving them exactly what they want.
& that's how the cunning woman, the woman in disguise, became the first magician
"Nice and slowly...
Beauty is a destructive angel,
how could anything that looks so good be so bad?
But there is no angel as destructive as their greed,
in the end she gets them all
They think they can handle her,
but greed is the only snake that can not be charmed"
- from Revolver
magic? it happens all the time. it happens every day. &, like anything else that can be said to exist, there are ways of attracting it.
the path to power is nothing but sustained focus
“Everybody, everybody everywhere, has his own movie going, his own scenario, and everybody is acting his movie out like mad, only most people don’t know that is what they’re trapped by, their little script.”
-Tom Wolfe
everybody thinks they know the magician.
nobody knows the magician, man.
not even the magician knows the magician.
"Conquer your fear, and you'll conquer your opponent"
- from Redbelt
"Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. You know the escape. You know the escape. Breathe. Breathe. There's always an escape. There is no situation you cannot escape from, no situation you cannot turn to your advantage"
- from Redbelt
"you had your whole life to prepare for this moment. Why aren't you ready?"
- from Spartan
There is a certain type of magick trick that can only be taught by a Master, and it is directly from a Master that one must learn it. Indeed, it can be said that it is precisely by mastering this trick that one oneself becomes a Master.
What is this trick? We like to call it "how to win without even playing in the first place".
"In the mind. That's where the battle's won"
- from Spartan
"The story says that after knocking on the door of that man we've been talking about, and having no success with him, the spirit used the only means available: trickery. After all, the spirit had resolved previous impasses with trickery. It was obvious that if it wanted to make an impact on this man it had to cajole him. So the spirit began to instruct the man on the mysteries of sorcery. And the sorcery apprenticeship became what it is: a route of artifice and subterfuge. Don Juan told me that if we apply his story to a modern setting we had the case of the nagual, the living conduit of the spirit, repeating the structure of this abstract core and resorting to artifice and subterfuge in order to teach. The first thing a nagual does with his prospective apprentice is to trick him. That is, he gives him a jolt on his connecting link to the spirit."
- Carlos Castaneda, the Power of Silence
The confluence of having and being, as concepts, resonate in the child, who seeing other as a not self in their being wishes to bring that alien part of itself into harmony - and what better way to be at peace with a thing, than to be that thing.
This unfortunately brings upon untoward associations when taken in the extreme. Two of the polarities that resonate the most between the young child and the untold other are those represented in the psyche as animals, and as other people. Coming into association, mentally, via local proximity these self-active concepts become a part of us.
As not self, we ponder what it is like to be the self for another active creator. The skin or empty assemblage that embodies this delving into the other are all those perceptions which go to make up that experience as and being our true self. As the mind enrobes itself, however feebly, it dons some aspect of that other being that will remain with it - for a time.
As the soul enclothes itself in thought with the psychic bodies of both concept of being and an imagined sensory skin, it blazes a trail through pre-existence, prior to materialization. A trail once beaten becomes easier to tread - a well beaten one well trafficked. By writing lines of thought inside one's being one is making oneself, and a large part of who we become are the types that we imaginatively put on. Every thought is, at its base, a loop and series of loops. As mind passes through the realm of imaginable possibility, as it rests on a concept - it expands that concept, in a very real sense.
All the attendant images open up with it, and as it spins round in one's head - it lasts. It is easier to open a thought, a book, than to close one. One must deal with one's thoughts with violence and finesse. Associative complexes can only be broken via reassociation - and this is active work: watching and precognizing one's thoughts so that they can be redirected down the righteous path one so chooses. Thoughts as well as events are foreshadowed, you can feel them coming - they have their own feeling to them that begins to well up in waves and blankets you as it passes you by. Like surfing, they must be ridden, and as in tai chi they must be smoothly directed so that you might move in the direction you desire.
As people we move not just in the external world which we 'know' exists apart from us but also in a world of ideas and stories very much an externally existing meta-entity which we run through with varying degrees of skill. They are both linked, but the operational methods that pertain to either are significantly different in their respective normal orientation.
