Only sorcerers can turn their feelings into intent. Intent is the spirit, so it is the spirit which moves their assemblage points. The misleading part of all this is that I am saying only sorcerers know about the spirit, that intent is the exclusive domain of sorcerers.
This is not true at all, but it is the situation in the realm of practicality. The real condition is that sorcerers are more aware of their connection with the spirit than the average man and strive to manipulate it. That’s all. I’ve already told you, the connecting link with intent is the universal feature shared by everything there is.
I’m trying to introduce the sorcery stories as a subject. I’ve never talked to you specifically about this topic because traditionally it’s left hidden. It is the spirit’s last artifice.
It is necessary that I begin drawing conclusions based on a systematic view of the past, conclusions about both the world of daily affairs and the sorcerers’ world.
Sorcerers are vitally concerned with their past, but I don’t mean their personal past. For sorcerers their past is what other sorcerers in bygone days have done. And what we are now going to do is examine that past.
The average man also examines the past. But it’s mostly his personal past he examines, and he does so for personal reasons. Sorcerers do quite the opposite; they consult their past in order to obtain a point of reference.
The average man measures himself against the past, whether his personal past or the past knowledge of his time, in order to find justifications for his present or future behavior, or to establish a model for himself. Only sorcerers genuinely seek a point of reference in their past.
For sorcerers, establishing a point of reference means getting a chance to examine intent. Which is exactly the aim of this final topic of instruction. And nothing can give sorcerers a better view of intent than examining stories of other sorcerers battling to understand the same force.
The subtleties of spirit
Using heightened awareness over thousands of years of painful struggle, sorcerers had gained specific insights into intent; and that they had passed these nuggets of direct knowledge on from generation to generation to the present. The task of sorcery is to take this seemingly incomprehensible knowledge and make it understandable by the standards of awareness of everyday life.
In sorcery there are twenty-one abstract cores. And then, based on those abstract cores, there are scores of sorcery stories about the naguals of our lineage battling to understand the spirit.
It’s time to tell you the abstract cores and the sorcery stories. Here we deal with the first and second of the six sets of subtleties, which include: the manifestations of the spirit, the assault of the spirit, the trickery of the spirit, the descent of the spirit, the requirements of intent, the decision of the spirit, the manipulation of intent and purposes of the spirit.
By means beyond comprehension, every detail of every subtlety is repeated for all apprentices. The way in which each learner perceives these subtleties creates a series of stories around them, incorporating the particular details of each apprentice’s personality and the circumstances surrounding them. When the apprentice understands the abstract cores it’s like the placing of the stone that caps and seals a massive pyramid.
The manifestations of the spirit
The first sorcery story I am going to tell you is called “The Manifestations of the Spirit, but don’t let the title mystify you. The manifestations of the spirit is only the first abstract core around which the first sorcery story is built.
That first abstract core is a story in itself. The story says that once upon a time there was a man, an average man without any special attributes. He was, like everyone else, a conduit for the spirit. And by virtue of that, like everyone else, he was part of the spirit, part of the abstract. But he didn’t know it. The world kept him so busy that he had neither the time nor the inclination really to examine the matter.
The spirit tried, uselessly, to reveal their connection. Using an inner voice, the spirit disclosed its secrets, but the man was incapable of understanding the revelations. Naturally, he heard the inner voice, but he believed it to be his own feelings he was feeling and his own thoughts he was thinking.
The spirit, in order to shake him out of his slumber, gave him three signs, three successive manifestations. The spirit physically crossed the man’s path in the most obvious manner. But the man was oblivious to anything but his self-concern.
I’ve just told you the first abstract core. The only other thing I could add is that because of the man’s absolute unwillingness to understand, the spirit was forced to use trickery. And trickery became the essence of the sorcerers’ path. But that is another story.
Sorcerers understand this abstract core to be a blueprint for events, or a recurrent pattern that appeared every time intent is giving an indication of something meaningful. Abstract cores, then, were blueprints of complete chains of events.
Omens and gifts
Every act performed by sorcerers was performed through their link with intent. Sorcerers therefore had to be actively and permanently on the lookout for manifestations of the spirit.
Such manifestations were called gestures of the spirit or, more simply, indications or omens. Man can change everything around him, the world adapts to us. This is not a gift, it is an act of will, an act of power. The world sustained by reason makes of all of this an insignificant event, which we can observe for a moment, among more important things. The world sustained by will, on the contrary, makes it an act of power, which we can see.
When a sorcerer interprets an omen he knows its exact meaning without having any notion of how he knows it. This was one of the bewildering effects of the connecting link with intent. Sorcerers had a sense of knowing things directly. How sure they were depended on the strength and clarity of their connecting link.
The feeling everyone knows as “intuition” is the activation of our link with intent. And since sorcerers deliberately pursue the understanding and strengthening of that link, it could be said that they intuit everything unerringly and accurately. Reading omens is commonplace for sorcerers – mistakes happen only when personal feelings intervene and cloud the sorcerers’ connecting link with intent. Otherwise their direct knowledge is totally accurate and functional.
The spirit manifests itself to a sorcerer at every turn. However, this is not the entire truth. The entire truth is that the spirit reveals itself to everyone with the same intensity and consistency, but only sorcerers are attuned to such revelations.
Intent creates edifices before us and invites us to enter them. This is the way sorcerers understand what is happening around them.
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