Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard

Course Two: Nature 53

And this interconnection and interpenetration of

everything with everything else provides the basis for

all Magick, according to the First Law of Magick: the

Law of Sympathy, which says that all things are linked

together by invisible bonds. This means that, just like

with a spider web, any action that touches one thread

affects the entire web. As conservationist John Muir

once said, “You cannot pluck a flower without touch-

ing a star.”

Lesson 3: “It’s Alive!”

There is no matter as such! All matter originates

and exists only by virtue of a force.... We must

assume behind this force the existence of a con-

scious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the

matrix of all matter. —Max Planck,

Nobel Prize–winning father of quantum theory

Just as everything is connected to everything else in

one great web, Wizards know also that the whole thing

is alive. Your body is composed of several trillion cells,

each a living system itself, but together comprising

the greater synergic unity that is you. All these living

cells are made of molecules, which in turn are com-

posed of atoms. And atoms are made up of protons,

electrons, neutrons, and a whole host of sub-atomic

particles that we keep discovering.

In the same way, you and I and every other per-

son, creature, tree, and flower are cells in the greater

living body of Mother Earth—or Gaea, as many call

Her. And the living Earth is only one of countless

bodies of all sizes—planets, moons, asteroids, com-

ets, meteorites, planetoids, and planetesimals—that

make up our solar system. Our entire solar system

itself is like a giant atom or cell, with the Sun as its

nucleus. And ours is only one of a hundred billion

star systems that make up the great spiral form of our

galaxy, all revolving in a vast whirlpool vortex about

the enormous black hole at its center. And the expand-

ing spiral shape of our galaxy is exactly the same as

the spiral of a chambered nautilus seashell, a pinecone,

the dance of a honeybee, and the solar wind that blows

radiation through our solar system. All these systems

have their own lives and all are also linked into each

other like Russian nesting dolls, each one fitting per-

fectly within the next larger one. And there is no end

to it. Through the Hubble telescope, we are just now

beginning to discern that the uncountable numbers of

galaxies throughout the universe are not scattered ran-

domly, but are clustered in vast bubble-like structures

that look a lot like cells....

And here’s the really mind-boggling part: Where

there is life, there is consciousness. Even the tiniest

living organism has awareness, or sentience, through

which it seeks food, avoids discomfort, reproduces

itself, and makes innumerable choices between this

and that in the course of its life. Such sentience per-

vades every living creature—from a single-celled

amoeba with no brain or nervous system, to a great

sperm whale with the largest brain on the planet. It is

such sentience that distinguishes an entity from an

object.

The lowliest bug has its own little agenda. It dem-

onstrates its sentience by investigating its world with

intense interest and curiosity, by making continual

choices based upon its preferences. And most impor-

tantly, things matter to it; it cares. It cares whether it

lives or dies, whether it eats or goes hungry, and

whether it reproduces. It hides from predators and

defends itself when attacked. It actively hunts for food

and mates by seeking and following interesting clues.

And if it’s a mother, it very likely protects its young.

When you think about it, this sentience drives the very

heart of evolution.

Lesson 4: The Balance

“The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A

Wizard’s power of Changing and of Summoning

can shake the balance of the world. It is danger-

ous, that power. It must follow knowledge, and

serve need. To light a candle is to cast a

shadow....” —Ursula K. LeGuin,

A Wizard of Earthsea, pp. 43–44

All things in the world, the many worlds, the Uni-

verse, and the Multiverse, are in a state of equilib-

rium. This means a cosmic Balance, in which every

action has its equal and opposite reaction. Light bal-

ances darkness, positive balances negative, anti-mat-

ter balances matter, and so on. Herein lies another

secret of Wizardry: A Wizard always stands at the

balance point in the middle, and looks both ways

equally. The Wizard must look at the energy flow

behind and ahead through his point of balance in the

present in order to make choices that do not shake the

balance of the world and cause the Wizard harm from

the turbulence. I put this principle into action con-

stantly in my own life. When I consider any amount

of time over the past, for example, I automatically

consider the same amount of time into the future—

whether it’s years, decades, centuries, millennia, or

geological aeons.

Lesson 5: The Circle of Life

One of the most important distinctions between the

magickal view of life and the mundane view concerns

the great Circle of Life. The mundane view of time is

linear—that is, seeing time as moving forward in a

straight line, from beginning through middle to end.

But to magickal people, and particularly Wizards, all

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