What are your first thoughts when you think of these words?
Ritual. Magick. Tantra.
These are loaded words nowadays. Some people may be getting images of elaborate esoteric sexual performances. Maybe you are seeing a pentagram drawn on the floor in blood. Whatever the case may be, these words need a serious look and some scholarly attention if a person is wanting to extract the real spiritual nutrients from their concepts.
This blog post is an attempt to re-define the terms so that they may be understood by the reader and utilized effectively. With our next Breath Ceremony coming up it would be wise for us all to be on the same page.
Firstly, let's look at ritual. Ritual is a word that comes from a Sanskrit word rta, which has a translation of something like "cosmic order". So ritual, which became translated into the Latin ritualis and then eventual the English version ritual is a word that means, essentially, "order".
Second word. Magick. Notice the extra "k". This is to differentiate from the common definition of magic, which many people see as sleight of hand tricks and other so-called "stage magic". Magick, on the other hand, is the "art and science of getting reality to conform with one's will". This is an Aleister Crowley definition. A Google search reveals an additional (and helpful to consider) definition : "the act (practice) of manipulating and directing energy according to your will so as to accomplish the desired goal" . I found this also helpful to consider: Any action, mundane or magical that helps fulfill one's True Will is magick.
This all can seem quite esoteric, as least it did for me, so let me refer to a definition my teacher gave me that helped me understand this word, magick, better. Everything we do is "magick", as another definition of magick is "the act of creating something out of nothing". All of our actions manifest from seemingly non-action. The goal of this life is get our actions to align with our True Will, that is, our soul essence. This is a fulfilled life. Nothing else we do or accomplish will be as satisfying as deeply soul aligned actions, no? This is what it means to live one's dharma. To be fully on purpose in everything we do.
So magick can be the act of aligning our energetic state with the desired state. That way, through this inner alignment, our desired state comes into manifestation from out of our core vibration. We can then "create" the life we desire, from where we are currently standing. Something from nothing. Magick!
Now we have a workable definition of magick... let's look at this final word.
Tantra.
No, not sexual enlightenment. Tantra, by definition, means to expand. Technically it is referring to expanding from limited sense of self to the unlimited identity of the cosmos.
Tantrikas find their liberation to Source through the world.
A true Tantrika understands that everything is divine. It is the understanding that you, me, this computer or phone we are on, our dog, everything is part of the same divine fabric of Reality. Everything is cut from the same cloth, the same Source. And that our liberation to this Source is possible through living our lives fully.
They were the original quantum physicists. They understand deity worship as the ability to align vibrationally with an imagined reality until they became the very thing they were worshipping.
So what does it mean?
What does "living our lives fully" mean?
What does "liberation to Source" mean?
What does it mean to "become the thing that is worshipped"?
This is where we tie together these three words -- ritual, magick, and Tantra. Are you ready for a kaboom moment?
If ritual means "cosmic order", and magick means "the art and science of conforming Reality to one's will" or "creating something from nothing", and Tantra is the science of expanding from individual to the unlimited Source, we have some very workable definitions and an understanding of HOW, exactly, ritual works.
We are entering into the discussion of ritual technology.
Why say grace at the beginning of a meal?
Why do marriage ceremonies have vows?
Why do people celebrate birthdays?
Why funerals?
All of these are examples of humans employing the technology of ritual. If only the people performing these actions realized that they were not simply mundane parts of life but rather quite extraordinary behavior patterns that are meant to help us align at deeper levels.
So, when we create our own ritual for our own purpose, what exactly are we trying to do?
If we understand quantum physics, we would realize that everything we desire exists as a potential in the field of unlimited possibilities. Our job is to resonate, or vibrate, at the frequency of the particular item of interest. The Tantrikas would vibrate with the frequency of various deities that they personified. This allowed them to become imbued with all sorts of powers so that they could heal, help, or transform the world around them. This is the essence of shamanism. Religion was a poor attempt to control these occult and esoteric powers. However, these powers exists everywhere in everyone -- we all have equal access to divinity. We just have to engage ourselves in a particular way, and we can find out the truth of what I am saying.
What I am saying is that once we understand the principle of quantum physics and how quantum physics intersects with spiritual technologies, we can leverage what we know to help us live better lives. To help us transform our ordinary existence into something extraordinary.
When we sit down to perform a ritual for ourselves, we are trying to align our energetic energy with the soul blueprint that we feel in our heart. We are taking time out of our day, to "set into order" (remember ritual = order) the quantum Field. We are seeking to align with an inner image we have. Our ability to imagine is tied to our ability to create. We hold the image in our mind of what it is we are striving for (the Tantrikas used images of deities), we might use an image of what our life looks like in the perfect setting. We might use an idol we are inspired by. Doesn't matter. We hold this image as clearly as possible in our mind's eye -- this is our intention for the ritual. This is why we are performing "magick" . We are attempting to change the reality that we live in currently to become a match to the image we are seeing in our mind.
Can we do this during our ritual? Perhaps. The challenge here is to break free of our own conditioned mindset that doesn't believe in ability to have or enjoy what we say we want. Our conditioned mind keeps us stuck in certain patterns. During a ritual, the goal is to break free of these patterns and for a moment enter the magickal realm. The realm of fantasy and possibility. The Quantum Realm. The realm of Tantra -- expansion. Stepping out of the limited self.
If we engage in our rituals effectively -- and it is only time, consistency and practice which can help us become more effective -- we start to see how it is from our spirituality that we are creating the life we are living. What we believe to be true in our mind and heart is how we see the world. And our rituals -- scattered through the days, weeks, and months of our life -- decorate the time with opportunities to re-define oneself, to create new outcomes, and to manifest different ways of being and living in the world. Our rituals are our opportunities to reconnect to the Source. To find out what we really want. To make real changes in our lives. And we do it by retreating from the outer world , dipping into the infinite inner well, , discovering something beautiful, and coming back into life to bring forth the newly found treasures.
My hope is that you will make your rituals more intentional. That you will know just how powerful you are, and what you are doing in these processes. We are all magicians. We are all Tantrikas. We are all performing rituals. If we started to look closer at what was hoping, we might take it more seriously. And by taking it more seriously, we might start to become more aligned with the life that life wants us to live.
It's a beautiful thing. Here's to cosmic alignment, my brothers and sisters.
With love and prana,
Grant Ifflander
Comments