mind magick

Brain Magick: Exercises In Meta-Magick and Invocation – Philip H. Farber

Brain Magick Cover

Brain Magick – Philip Farber

Llewellyn, 2011, 9780738729268, 247pp

Brain Magick was the book I picked for the first Sorcerer’s Shelf Reading Challenge 2025; Reread a magick book you found valuable- with more experience and knowledge, you catch things you missed the first time. Reread a foundational text with a few more years of practical experience, or something that interested you but you never really got into. It fits both of these categories for me. I first read it shortly after its 2011 release, and though I found the ideas compelling, I didn’t delve deeply into the practices at the time. Instead, the book influenced me more on a theoretical level, I took the concepts to heart, but not the actual techniques. Now, as I’m working on shifting various aspects of my life and retraining my mind, it has become more relevant to my current path, and invaluable in some recent work.

Part of the premise of Brain Magick revolves around the idea that universal patterns in magickal practices across cultures stem from common neurological processes. Farber argues that “anything we can do, magically or otherwise, will be represented by corresponding processes in our brains, bodies, and behaviors” (p. 4). Understanding these processes can enhance both our magick and our lives.

I often describe this book as “Magick about magick” or “Magickal biofeedback.” Through a variety of exercises, Farber guides us to analyze our thoughts, emotions, and the corresponding physiological responses they trigger. For example, when you feel loved, your chest may feel expansive; when anxious, it can feel as though a cold heavy hand pushes your shoulders down. By learning to recognize and recreate these physical sensations, you can consciously trigger emotional states. If you want to summon confidence, for instance, you can cultivate the physical feeling of it in your body and use it on demand. You can also work with anxiety by safely triggering the sensation in controlled situations, gradually replacing it with more empowering emotional states, or project it as a being to engage with, or project beneficial mental states onto anticipated negative events to help improve the mental/emotional response when the event occurs. This approach extends to magickal and meditative states, allowing you to invoke these responses to deepen your practices, think about creating magickal biofeedback so you can help trigger specific deeper magickal states more quickly.

As the book progresses, Farber introduces the idea of treating these states as entities that can be invoked, customized, and even created from scratch. For example, you can externalize negative emotions, like fear of failure, by turning them into a “spirit” that you can interact with, negotiate with, and heal. Over time, you learn to create and manipulate emotions, overlaying them on events in your life to foster the desired mental state. Farber takes this further by teaching how to combine multiple states into a single “god” that embodies all the qualities you need for a particular situation. If you need to confront a malevolent spirit, for instance, you could create a “god” filled with authority, courage, and an unshakable will to support you in the encounter. If you’re facing a high-stakes work presentation, you could create a “god” of charisma and quick wit to help you excel, tapping on memories of times you were at your best or imagining how you could be.

In essence, Brain Magick is about bringing all the best aspects of yourself under conscious control, both by amplifying your natural traits and by developing new ones. Early in my reread, I used the techniques in the book to handle an issue at work. Something went sideways at work, no one’s fault, but it was after everyone else had left on a Friday, so I knew we’d have to address it Monday, during a meeting so early I’m usually not conscious most days at that time (joys of being on a global team). The manager for that meeting just manages to rub me the wrong way, so the idea of this pre-waking meeting with this problem and that manager had already soured my weekend, I really didn’t want to deal with that manager being cranky when I should be sleeping.

Using the techniques from Brain Magick, I tapped into a feeling of resourceful, calm confidence from playing a card game with family the previous week, and I had that moment of realizing I was in control. I would win on the next turn and no one could play anything to stop me, I had already won, I just needed to play the final card. I projected that feeling onto my expectations of the upcoming meeting, replacing my expected anxiety and annoyance with this sense of resourceful control. As a result, I was able to enjoy my weekend without the looming stress of Monday morning. When the meeting came, I was calm, focused, and able to address the issue efficiently, create a solution, and delegate tasks. Even though the manager tried to press my buttons, I remained unbothered, because I had already won, I just needed to play the final card.

Brain Magick also teaches you to create “gods” with your best traits and aspirations. For instance, I’ve never been good with dreams, but using these techniques, I’ve been building a “Dreaming God.” At first, I focused on recreating the physical sensations associated with dream recall, the feeling of holding onto a memory right after waking up as I write it down. I then projected that sensation to enhance my dream recall. Gradually, as recall improved I began working with other aspects of dreaming as I observed them, like shifting between sleep stages and incubating ideas for dreams. Each success in dreaming gives me another experience or mental state that I can recreate and incorporate adding new layers to my Dreaming God and giving me greater access to those dream states.

Brain Magick teaches the art of observing, creating, and modifying personal psycho-energetic patterns whether they are emotional states, “gods,” or transmuted personal flaws. Self-mastery is a vital skill for any sorcerer, and this book provides a powerful method for cultivating your best self. I highly recommend it, especially for anyone framing their magickal path as a journey of guiding or transmuting aspects of their personality.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick, 0 comments

SAD, Depression, and Woogity Support

Clinical depression is one of the most common mental health conditions. Close in numbers would be Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), and of course there is some overlap. (If you’re unfamiliar SAD is essentially a temporary form of depression brought on by reduced sunlight in winter months)
Before I go farther I’d like to make two things clear. Depression is a mental health condition, it is an umbrella for a variety of neurological conditions where the brain cannot produce or process certain neurotransmitters most commonly associated with happy moods and motivation. Depression isn’t feeling bad or sad, it’s not just an emotional funk to snap out of, it’s a literal physical condition in the brain. You can no more cure depression with thinking happy thoughts than you can cure anemia by thinking iron-laden thoughts. Secondly what I will be discussing is not, in any way, meant to supplant medical treatment. What I discuss can help manage depression in some cases, deal with the edge of it, but it will not cure it, and shouldn’t be assumed to be a replacement for proper medical treatment. Like any medical condition you can do magickal workings to help support it and the medical treatment, but a serious condition will not be cured by magick alone.
I’m part of this statistical group. I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, and have for almost 20 years. I deal with it better now than I did even a decade ago due to three things: light therapy, medication, and woogity. I want to share what techniques I’ve found work the best for me, and while these are more specifically how I manage SAD, I believe they may be of some relevance to people with depression.
First and foremost the best technique for managing depression I have is my meditation practice. Specifically anapana/vipassana meditation. While part of a bigger rant, let me say that all meditations are not equal, and not useful, and in this situation anapana has what we’re looking for. Anapana has a variety of benefits not found in more generic meditations but this is overlooked by pop-science articles that claim colouring books are just as good, as they they measure things like heartrate and brain waves, ignoring the point of the meditation. Relevant to SAD/Depression anapana helps you identify thoughts, chains of thoughts, and where they come from. This is very important because sometimes when in a depressive episode it’s hard to know where a thought comes from, do you really not want to go to that party cause you won’t have fun, or are you thinking that cause you’re depressed? Anapana can help you see where that thought comes from. Anapana also teaches you to catch distractions and thoughts as they form and redirect your focus. Again this is useful for a depressive episode because it is common to get caught in depressive loops, and not necessarily realize it or be able to break it. This helps you learn to catch the mind, and redirect, if only for a little bit. There are a lot of great resources to learn about anapana, I’ve written about it before and there are of course youtube tutorials.
The second technique I use is Pore Breathing and Compacting. This goes to the cause of SAD, a lack of sunlight. Sit comfortably somewhere you can see sunlight, if you can sit in the sun that’s best, and in a pinch you can do this with artificial lights and connect to the Sun energetically, but doesn’t seem to be nearly as potent. Perceive your body as empty and hollow, it’s like a clear crystal vase, no muscles, skeletons, or organs inside, no channels or energy centres, just a clear crystal surface in the shape of your body. Now as you breathe in, draw the light into your body, it travels in with the breath but also through the surface, it remains inside on the outbreath held in by the crystal and your will. Repeat this, increasing the intensity of the light until after several minutes you are as radiant as the sun yourself. For you first few times, I recommend stopping here, just breathe normally for a bit, and open your eyes and go about your day.
For a more advanced version once you’re radiant it is time to compact that light. On each in breath the light contracts, pulling into the centre of your chest a little, staying there, slightly smaller, as you breathe out. Each breath pulls it a little bit more into the heart centre, and a few minutes you should have a radiant brilliant pearl in your heart centre. Leave it there, and over the day it will dissipate slowly letting solar energy into your body.
A small warning with this technique though, Solar Energy can make it a bit hard to sleep, at least until you get used to it. So you’re better off doing this in the morning or early afternoon.
As said, these are in no way replacements for proper medical treatments, but I’ve found these very useful to supplement my medical work around my health, and perhaps they can be beneficial to some of you.
If you have any recommended supplementary techniques that have worked for you, I would love to hear them, and I’m sure they might benefit other readers.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick