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MAGIC is about power and control - the ability to create change in accordance with magical will. The change is effected through ritual acts in which supernatural forces are invoked and made subservient to the to your will. Will is understood by magical practitioners as the focusing of desire; will is something that much be created and trained. Belief in ones ability to perform magic involved coming to accept a belief that one is capable of creating change [that one is powerful] and that the change will occur according to ones will [that one is in control].

Transforming yourself

Most people associate magic with outer change and spell work. There are many books and techniques designed to help you harness the power of nature, thorough the use of hers, stones, colours, candles and symbols. These are powerful ways to do magic, but magic is essentially about creating inner change. Props may be useful but it is the mind that works magic, and success at spell work is believed to rest upon the mastery of medication and visualisation exercise.

You may want to begin a meditative visualisation by lighting a candle, asking for inner guidance, breathing deeply and closing your eyes. You can use body relaxation, incense, guided countdowns and soothing imagery to get into an altered state of mind where you can access your inner energy patterns - your conscious and unconscious thoughts, emotions, dreams, hopes and fears. Most importantly you can connect with your inner guidance, awaken your psychic abilities and connect with healing spirits and gods.

Now in your inner vision, imagine yourself the way you want to be. Use images of coloured light and simple symbols to work with energy. If you need courage, think about what colour feels most like courage to you. Then imagine yourself surrounded in that colour: You could also create an affirmation to give you more courage.

Other techniques for magical change include creating an inner sacred space that you can go to anytime and anywhere, regardless of where your altar or ritual tools are. In your imagination build an inner temple of learning and healing. Create a gateway to your spirit guides. Look into an inner mirror or crystal for glimpses of your past lives. All of this takes place on the inside, but creates a powerful and lasting change. Listen to your inner guide and let it take you on your own incredible healing journey.

MANDALAS From a Sanskrit word meaning 'magic circle' or 'disc', a mandala is a circular visual representation that is used as a focus point for the practice of mediation. When creating a mandala the artist attempts to coordinate his or her personal circle with the universal circle, reflecting how his or her life fits into the larger whole.

The mandala art form is widely used in the East and often associated with Tibetan monks artists and Navaho Indians who create them out of multicoloured sand as formal geometrical expression of sacred vibrations; however, mandalas transcend culture and religion, time and place. When a person concentrates on a mandala they are attempting approach a higher plane of consciousness and, according to psychologist Carl Jung, they are the ultimate symbols for uniting our inner and outer selves. Jung found that the integrative properties of the mandala had benefits in psychotherapy; by drawing mandalas patients could make order out of inner confusion.

Creating your own mandala

You do not need to be artists to create a mandala. You can make one in any way that you want and with any material there are no right or wrong mandalas, it can be drawn, shaped of clay, cloth or flowers or any material you like. It can even be created in your minds eye. Here is one way to go about creating a mandala.

Gather your materials and go to a quiet, private space. Light a candle or burn incense to establish a reflective mood. You may find it helpful to sit quietly for a few moments of prayer or meditation before beginning your mandala. This helps focus your attention on messages from the unconscious. Perhaps an image, a colour, or even a movement will come to you as the beginning point for your mandala.

Next draw a circle freehand, with a compass, or traced around a plate or other template. The circular shape represents a natural and ultimate wholeness and appears in symbols dating back to the Palaeothic Age. Then fill in your circle with the colour and content of your choice. Typically the circle is orientated to four points. Sometimes this is done by squaring, in which a square is drawn outside the circle; other times it is drawn by geometric designs such as interpenetrating triangles or other designs drawn inside the circle. Allow your mandala to unfold with as little thought as possible. Let go of all your ideas about how a mandala should look. Virtually anything round can be viewed as a mandala; the sun, the moon, a clock, the earth, a wheel. Octagons also have mandala shapes. Square and triangles suggest mandalas too, since circles and triangles may be drawn within squares and vice versa.

When you have completed your mandala, write the days sate on it, and then put it somewhere in your living space where you can walk by and see it often. Let it be part of your life for a few days. Be open to receive any message it has for you. The colours, shapes and numbers of a mandala can show us our inner picture. Like the symbols in dreams it is thought they hold a specific message and by meditating on it was can reach a higher awareness of self.

MASSAGE the kneading, pressing, rubbing or stroking of muscles and the soft tissues of the body for therapeutic purposes. Massage therapy is an ancient healing art practiced by all cultures that was first documented in Chinese writings around 3000 BC. Today it is a popular, non-invasive and safe alternative therapy known for its physical, psychological and even mystical benefits. There are different schools of massage based on these three effects.

The physical school of massage concentrates on producing physical benefits, such as pain relief, relaxation for tense muscles, increasing blood circulation, and stimulation of lymphatic drainage, which promotes the removal of toxins from the body. It is perhaps best represented by 'Swedish massage', so named because it was developed by Swede, Per Henrik Ling in the early nineteenth century. Most masseurs today are taught six classical massage movements as defined by Ling; effleurage, petrissage, kneading, hacking, cupping and tapotement.

The primary focus of holistic massage is physical and psychological benefit. This school works on the whole person and incorporates theories of energy medicine into its practice. The masseur works to balance the flow of the universal life force through the body whiles also providing physical benefits. Psychological benefits include the reduction of stress and promotion of feelings of well being because of the release of endorphins into the body after a massage treatment. Shiatsu, Rolfing, reflexology and aromatherapy are examples of holistic massage.

The 'spiritual' school of massage may or may not involve physical massage and its primary aim is to align energies in the body. Examples of this type of massage school are therapeutic touch, reiki, zero balancing and polarity therapy.

MEDICAL INTUITIVE A person with a specific spiritual healing ability who has learned to hone and apply skills of intuition to the filed of medical diagnosis. A medical intuitive can visualise the anatomy of the human body and its energy field, the aura, and correctly diagnose the root causes of disease and poor health. They can then direct their healing energies to the afflicted area.

A gifted medical intuitive uses their intuitive powers to 'see' and pinpoint specific illnesses, imbalances, weaknesses and pre-clinical disease states in the organs of the human body, as well as fields of force or auras around the human body. This work is done by intuitively scanning the body for areas of imbalance that may need alignment or treatment. Often the medical intuitive will be able to explain the connection of the energy to an emotion or an event causing the illness.

The most widely known medical intuitive diagnostician was Edgar Cayce who claimed to be able to read many aspects of a person's health intuitively and his focus centred on the health of the energy body and the physical body. Cayce proposed that stress, attitudes and emotions affect ones health and that negative emotions released toxins that could create energy depleting imbalances. He believed that all illness is the result of overloads and blockages in these three main aspects of energy - physical, mental and spiritual. In one of his readings, Cayce said 'Healing of the physical without change in the mental and spiritual aspects brings little real help to the individuals in the end.'

MEDITATION A contemplative technique of focusing your concentration on a specific object or thought for self-improvement or spiritual growth.

The supreme goal of meditation, typically practised by the non-secular world, is union with the absolute. Secular mediators use meditation in their daily lives to create feelings of calm or open in body and soul and to improve health, creativity, self-esteem, success and relationships to cultivate psychic powers and gain self-knowledge. Meditation by itself cannot achieve these goals but it can help develop the power and ability to do so.

MEDIUM Mediumship is the receipt of information that is not available through the normal senses, typically from spirits of the dead. Mediums serve as a channel for communication between the living and the dead. They may also heal and produce physical phenomena, such as the movement of objects. A medium's communication with spirits is often governed by entities known as controls. Some psychical researchers believe that so-called controls are not spirits but are secondary personalities of the medium instead.

Typically mediumship manifests in adulthood, but early in life there may have been indications - a child hearing or seeing things others do not, for example. Often a medium will resist the gift but gradually begin to accept it as unavoidable. If the mediumship is to develop into a real skill it often requires training. There are some who believe mediumship is an inherited characteristic but this is generally not the truth. Many mediums have no family history of mediumship.

METAPHYSICS is a branch of philosophy concerned with the study of first principles and being. Its central doctrine is that all things are part of one main source [intelligence and energy], and that each thing, animate or inanimate, should be respected for its particular form of this one main source; therefore each thing has an independent function and all are contributing to the main source.

In recent times, the meaning of the world metaphysics has become confused by popular signifiers that are actually unrelated to metaphysics. Magic and the occult, for example, are not so much concerned with the metaphysical enquiry or the nature of being; through they do tend to proceed on the metaphysical assumption that all being is 'one'.

MIRACLE is something that happens beyond the scope of reality and it typically occurs within a religious context. Miracles are usually attributed to a divine and/or supernatural power that intervenes in the normal course of events and changes their expected or predicted outcome. Examples include miraculous healing and changes in weather that the weather forecaster had failed to identify.

Modern scientific views of nature, and therefore the definition of miracle, fall roughly into two schools of thought. The rational materialist view, dominant in the nineteenth century, attempted to explain everything in terms of matter and energy, governed by rigid laws that determine all events. In this view the supernatural is an illusion. In the twentieth century, however, a less rigidly deterministic scientific model of the universe began to emerge, thanks to mainly Einstein's theory of relativity, Heisenberg's quantum theory and growing acceptance of the minds control of the body. Many scientists therefore have been more willing than before to admit that there are 'more things in heaven and earth' than nineteenth century scientists realised. This is not so much an acknowledgment of the supernatural as it is a willingness to include in nature what may seem supernatural according to our present knowledge.

MUSIC the ability of musical sounds to influence positively or negatively health, mood, morality and consciousness has been known for centuries. Music as form of therapy has been used in almost all cultures for healing, meditation and exploring consciousness.

In Eastern traditions sound vibration has long been used for healing and spiritual development, combined with chants, musical instruments and movement. The ancient Chinese believed music to be the basis of all things and Confucius stated that if the music of a civilisation changed, then its society would change too. The ancient Greeks believed in the healing power of music for insomnia and anxiety. Aristotle believed that music affected character. Pythagoras found that all music can be reduced to numbers and concluded that the universe could be similarly explained.
According to modern research the elements of music that have been shown to have physical and psychological effects are rhythm, tone and pitch, interval [the distance between the notes] and timbre [the nature of the music which creates associations in the listeners mind]. It is thought that music's beneficial effects are due to the principle of entertainment, a physics principle in which stronger vibrations cause weaker vibrations to begin pulsing in the same harmony. Therefore music is able to entrain the body, mind and spirit by affecting physiological rhythms, and studies have indeed shown that music can alter pulse rate, brain waves and blood pressure. It can also help release emotion, ease physical pain, induce relaxation and encourage the release of the bodies feel good hormones - called endorphins.

Music therapy, which focuses on the areas of pain relief and stress reduction, enjoyed a revival in the late twentieth century largely due to the work of violinist Helen L. Bonny, which book 'Music and Your Health' [1973] was the first in a series of books and features on the health effects of music.
Music can also have toxic effects on the body. Some forms of music, such as heavy metal, have been shown to negatively affect the health of plants and animals and have been associated with depression and aggressive behaviour.

New age music, which came to the fore in the 1970's, has been criticised as bland and tuneless, but supporters believe that it can expand consciousness and foster physical and psychological well being.

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE an experience on which a person transcends the bounds of ordinary consciousness to awareness beyond time, space and the physical.

Mystical experiences are typically spiritual but not necessarily religious, a person need not be a monk or a nun to have once. According to a 1987 survey by the National Opinion Center in Chicago, over 40 per cent of American adults claimed to have had some type of mystical experiences.

Psychologist William James believed that there were four characteristics of mystical experiences:

1. They are difficult to describe or convey to others.
2. Time and space are transcended.
3. Although they seem eternal in real time they are fleeting, lasting only a few second.
4. The individual feels swept up and held by a separate power and this may be accompanied by a feeling of separation from the body, as is the case with out of the body experiences.

James believed the simplest type of mystical experience was that 'ah ha' moment that bursts upon a person when a new insight occurs or when sometime is seen in a new light. He also believed déjà vu was a simple mystical experience. Higher up the mystical experience ladder he placed sudden awareness of the absolute and a feeling of unity with it.

Typically mystical experiences occur when a person is alone and feeling relaxed. A number of things can trigger a mystical experience including dreams, music, art, daydreaming, light and words. Although experiences are included by techniques such as hypnosis, fasting, chanting, prayer, dancing, creates control and meditation.

Mystical experiences are said to flood an individual with immense joy and a sense of gratitude, wellbeing and, in some instances, ecstasy. Awareness of the body seems to be lost and bodily functions slow right down. The rise of powerful kundalini energy and the physical sensations associated with that are also reported, as are paranormal powers such as levitation, clairvoyance, materialization and so on. Mystical states are also frequently characterized by light and heat, but in the very highest states all physical, mental and emotional sensations fall away. A dramatic change in life circumstances typically follows a mystical experience.

According to Freudian psychology mystical experiences are illusions, and psychologist Carl Jung regarded them as liberations of the unconscious. Humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow described certain mystical experiences as 'peak experiences' which were therapeutic and essential to health, wellbeing and development of potential.
Some scientists think that mystical experiences is a brain function that can be induced by stimulation of the temporal lobes, which lie beneath the brains hemisphere. At the turn of the twentieth century British doctor John Hughlings noticed that epileptics have different temporal lobes from others, and in 1933 American doctor Wilder Penfield was able to induce mystical experience phenomena in epileptics by stimulating their brains with electrical currents. Although the lobe theory remains controversial, in the 1970s and 80s the relationship between paranormal experiences and the temporal lobes was established further with electromagnetic stimulation.