First of all, this is not a short essay on “Infinite Cosmic
Power”. Nor is this essay meant to be spiritual or psychiatric
advice. If you feel that you are really dealing with depression,
seek professional help. IMMEDIATELY. This essay is about a
place that isn’t a place. It’s about a place that you do not want
to be, but if you are already there, then it can be helpful to
you. In an essay by Frater Altima, “THE
MAGICK THINGIE”, he states as follows.
“The answer (if you find one) is something that comes
from experience and many people find it during an extremely
altered state of consciousness
(drugs, recovering from severe depression, kundalini experiences,”
I’m going to talk a bit about recovering from severe depression.
Let’s start with the definition of depression as presented in Wikipedia,
Clinical depression (also called major-depressive disorder
or unipolar depression) is a common psychiatric disorder,
characterized by a pervasive low mood, loss of interest
in usual activities and diminished ability to experience pleasure.
Depression is, basically, a radical change in reality for the worse
(notice the word pervasive in the definition). When a person
becomes depressed, every aspect of their reality changes. The
colors are muted, the light is just a little bit less captivating and
universal joy seems to be just out of reach. In the case of many
that have depression, the change isn’t even really noticed.
Usually it isn’t rapid like a tidal wave; it is gradual like the
setting of the sun. There is, however, a total change in
perception.
The total change in perspective is the key. One of the key
factors in recovery from depression is that one should have a degree of
skepticism about one’s perception. Consider this, if one’s whole
perception can be changed negatively as so obviously (to the depressed
person) happened, then what does that say about the stability of our
perceptions?
The first step of magick is becoming utterly convinced of the
mutability of reality in the same way that you are utterly convinced
that you are reading these words right now. If you focus on your
perceptions of the world around you depression can help you see how the
world didn’t quite so much change as much as your perception of
it. The world didn’t darken, your perceptions darkened.
From there it is a matter of establishing that perception/reality (have
you ever noticed that you don’t have perception without reality and
vice versa?) can be changed in a positive and a neutral as well as a
negative direction. Discovering how one’s perception/reality can
be changed in a positive, neutral or negative way is basically what
magick is all about and there are many, many paths that the initiate
can take.
