Recently I’ve been listening to Caroline Myss’ lecture on foundations of spiritual alchemy (borrowed from my local library on Libby! Wow!!) In it, she notes that “to keep silence” is one of the vows a person on a spiritual path might take to protect their understanding of the mysteries. This is certainly a vow one might take. I understand it, as there is wisdom in finding your own personal answers to the Mysteries. Me personally I believe in offering perspective to those who seek, but it got me thinking about my own personal list of magical vows. And I started developing.
So far, I have six. I don’t want these to be too rigid, nor do I want to be bound by something I thought of when I was 28, so I consider this a non-inclusive, mutable, and contextually dependent list of vows. They are:
- First, Know Thyself and Do No Harm
- Strive for Balance
- Listen, then Offer
- Sapere Aude
- Seek, then Ask
- In Confidence, Keep
On top of being vows I can take to align myself, they’re also like cognitive sticky notes reminding me how to be. I’ll explore each of them a bit below:
Know Thyself and Do No Harm
The first step to turning energy into matter is to know thyself. To know the thoughts we habitually inhabit is to know which reality we are living in. It’s possible to change thoughts to change reality, but in order to do this, I’ve found it helpful to first fully understand the thoughts that are shaping the present reality. The second half of this has been throwing me for a loop a little bit.
“Do No Harm” is a great ideal. It’s in the Hippocratic oath, but in a magickal practice is this always possible? No. Every action in some respect has an element of harm associated with it, intentional or not. Sometimes harm must be done to restore balance or to liberate the oppressed. So this one is more of a reminder to be mindful of the harm that a course of action may entail. To run the calculus of “how little harm can I do to accomplish my goals which will in the future reduce harm for the most amount of people?” It’s harm reduction all the way down, baby.
Strive for Balance
Maybe it’s the biracial, bisexual, bigenderness of my existence, but I find it envigorating to think of the balance of all things. Remembering/forgetting, efficiency/efficacy, work/play, civility/ferocity, logic/emotion all of these are polarities that exist on various spectra. For me, the path to my best idealized self appears to be walking on a ridge with a tightrope poll. Skew too far one way and the path becomes arduous, close to the edge of slipping. To move forward on the path and upwards to the summit, I need to remember and strive for balance between all things.
Listen, then Offer
I love giving advice. It’s like one of my top five favorite pastimes. The downside to this, is that people don’t always ask for it. Sometimes my advice can come in the form of a question “have you thought about…” sometimes it’s a personal experience “well when I was in your shoes I…” but a lot of times, people don’t need advice. They simply need your ear. So my goal with this one is to lead with listening. Acknowledge the difficulty of the situation, and then ask if they want my piece on it. If not, no harm no foul. If yes, I can approach the situation in its relation to all the things I’ve learned about this life based on my experiences, pull what I know of this person and their issue, and try to offer guidance. A note here is that I never want to proclaim that I have a definitive answer for any situation, but merely to offer a path to the water, or somewhere nearby. Whether or not they follow, whether or not they drink of it, is not up to me whatsoever.
Sapere Aude
First scribed by Horace in the 1st century CE, Sapere Aude has come to be a dear dear friend of mine. In it is one of the four powers of the Magus, that 19th century occultist Éliphas Lévi writes about in Trancendental Magic. (Little tangent here but it’s fun dw) The four powers correspond to the four classical elements of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth. They are To Know (Noscere), To Dare (!!Audere!!), To Will (Velle), To Keep Silence (Tacere), respectively. See what Myss was linking to now?
Back to the main point… The phrase Sapere Aude is Latin (yum!) and can be translated as Sapere — To Be Wise (like from the sapiens of Homo sapiens, that’s us!!) and Aude, which as translated above is To Dare. All together now… it means Dare to be Wise. Enlightenment philosopher Emmanuel Kant says this is the motto of enlightenment when he asked in 1784 “What is Enlightenment?” Postmodernist Michel Foucault (QUEEN) expands upon this when he again asks “what IS enlightenment??”
Simply put, to me Sapere Aude means… question everything. The truth is out there, we just have to be courageous enough to ask the right questions and go against the narrative that we’re fed. This vow helps because it ties in with point 1. To know thyself, one must first know intimately the thought forms that they inhabit. And to know which thought forms you inhabit, one must first know what materials went into the walls, floors, and ceilings, so to speak.
So, dear reader, question everything. Even this!! And come to your own conclusions. Just like… get vaccinated and don’t drink raw milk… that might be vow №7 tbh
Seek, then Ask
Okay this one is a SUPER REMINDER for me because often times I will go to people wiser than me and ask for their advice before doing vows 1-5 or asking google.com. My bad. It ties into my understanding that just as the Mysteries are best experienced by oneself, so too are the answers are best found. I really gotta get better at just like… googling shit before asking. Building a solid understanding of an idea before asking someone for advice is better than treating them like my personal Google.
Recently I sent an email to an Elder of my tradition, and a powerful mage, for resources on the alchemical process of development specifically as it refers to Albedo. A few nights later I had a dream where I was in an art store asking the very fashionable store clerk where the paintbrushes were and he showed me that they were in a very obvious spot below the easels and canvases, slightly below eye level where it would be readily visible. Asked and answered I guess🤣 Honestly if everyone could reply to my emails in symbolically dense dream projection, that would be most helpful to me thx 🙏🏼 🥰
In short, ask the World and build an understanding before asking others. I don’t fault myself for relying on my community, but the more I can seek out and find information myself, the more likely it is that I will find what I’m looking for. Plus research is a skill that is slowly slipping my grasp and thanks to Technique (or progress for progress’ sake) I now need to add “sifting through mountains of GenAI shit slop to find the source materials I’m looking for” to my skill tree. Thanks Alt-man.
In Confidence, Keep
This one was marked to me a few days ago by a large piece of brown glass found on the farm. I was telling a coworker something that a mutual friend shared with me. What they shared wasn’t explicitly stated that “this is in confidence” but it was sensitive in nature. One of my goals in life is to be a priest. Not like a white-tab seminary-graduate style priest, but a priest in my own way. Part of being Clergy is clerical confidence. When something is shared, it is meant to be kept and not spread around as if it’s trivial gossip. The Farm and The World were trying to tell me that this was not something to be shared. And I now heed that warning. If I want to walk this path, I must keep certain things in confidence. Understood.
And that’s it for now:)
These are my six (plus 7. Get vaccinated and don’t drink raw milk). For now. At this stage in my life, I like ‘em. They suit me. They fit well. They may help me talk less shit and tame Vox Divinitus’ shadowy counterpart Vitriol. Vitty is necessary sometimes, she can help protect community and build safety by outcasting unacceptable behavior; but man oh man do I need to reel it in sometimes. Hope you like, dear ephemeral reader. Maybe this inspires you to write your own set of personal vows! Happy to hear about ‘em:)