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Although science seeks to unravel the mysteries of the universe, magick practitioners revel in them. We perceive these gaps in concrete data as the perfect opening through which spiritual truths can sneak and touch our reality. The world of the modern metaphysician is, after all, like Oz to our mundane Kansas—a place filled to overflowing with wonders, potential, and possibilities. One of them is the very viable possibility that humans are much more than simple flesh and blood, that we are, instead, beings of soul, and power, and magick!

Some people think such talk is nothing more than superstitious prattle. Others regard the human soul and magick as part of the supernatural world, and as such seemingly separate, inaccessible, and incomprehensible to most humans. I, and thousands of other people in the world today, disagree with both of these outlooks wholeheartedly. We see both the soul and its inherent magick as a birthright and as an important part of humankind's makeup. Magick Made Easy builds on this premise, recognizing that this birthright affects different. people in very different ways. Exactly how it transforms each individual's present into a more fulfilling and empowering future depends a lot on personal vision and how he or she perceives this enigmatic thing called "magick."

For those of you who have already been exposed to the world of magick, some of the information in this chapter may be a review. I suggest you scan it anyway. I think you'll find some fresh perspectives in here thatwill augment or facilitate your continuing studies.

For the newcomers reading this who might be anxious to dive in headfirst and get started on spellcraft or other processes, I'm a great advocate of testing the waters. Consequently, this chapter focuses on the "abouts" rather than the "how-tos" of magick. In the following pages you can get your astral feet wet by examining the answers I've given to the most common questions people ask about magick and how the whole thing works.

As you read, please know that my vision of magick and spirituality is not the only way to approach this topic successfully— it's just the way that works for me and one that seems to have helped my students over the years. To embark on this adventure with me as a teacher, however, you must first be willing to follow some rules I give to all my students:

Don't let anyone or anything else take over this important job in your life.

Wait a minute. Don't go getting all nervous on me now. You already fulfill this role every day simply by making choices. You sort out good from bad, action from inaction. Now you're just going to take it one step farther into your spiritual life. Right here and now I want you to start trusting your instincts about what's wholly right for you—don't just take my word for anything—then act accordingly. After all, I can only share with you what I've experienced. Ultimately, it will be up to you to decide if the glimmers of "truth" I've gathered over the years can be successfully adapted and applied to your life and reality.

I must confess that I've always hated the "M" word. This is because the first thing that comes to most people's minds is a stage magician pulling a bunny out of a hat or Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer's apprentice with a rainbow of sparks flying out of his wand. Unfortunately, I don't have a better word to work with, so bear with me.

Real magick is not a stage illusion, and it's nothing like what the media has portrayed it as. Though I might wish I could reach into a hat and pull out whatever I need, twitch my nose and have a clean house, or hop on a handy broom to travel abroad (I hear brooms get great mileage), this is not modern magick as we know it. And, unfortunately, these portraits do little to help us clarify what constitutes magick as a mystical, spiritual procedure that makes sense in the workaday world around us.

So to define magick, let's first try looking to the dictionary. Here we discover that the root word for magick, magi was a title given to priests in Persia who were skilled in sorcery. Consequently, the term magick implies occult competence, but don't let the word occult scare you off This term originally meant a natural science that sought to uncover the secret mysteries of the mind and the world in which we live and then endeavored to apply that knowledge effectively. That pretty well describes what most modern practitioners of magick try to do!

Beyond this, we also know that the magi were considered learned, wise people who had the ability to produce amazing effects through the careful and responsible use of power. This, too, describes the modern magick practitioner. Even so, it leaves us with two unanswered questions: Where does this power come from? How does it produce such effects?

To answer those questions, we have to look at a secondary characteristic of magick, which is to bend and change. Through various techniques, discussed in this book, the magick user willfully gathers energy from the world around him or her, and sometimes from the expanse ofthe universe or the god/dess (the Sacred Parent/Devine Power behind all creation), and binds it into a strand of power.