I don’t have enough time.
I can’t.
I have to.
How many times have you said any (or all) of these this week? Today?
In magic, it’s understood that words have power, but too often, we overlook all of the little “mundane” things we say, day in and day out.
Ancient Hermetic Wisdom
In Hermeticism, a body of philosophical and magical teachings named after the god Hermes, there’s a creation story that goes a little something like this:
In the beginning, was the ALL.
The ALL, as you might expect, was everything.
But the ALL got bored, you see, with sitting around being everything, so it decided to separate into the One Mind and the One Thing.
The One Mind took the form of blindingly brilliant, piercing light, while the One Thing was a dark, roiling ocean of that could take any form.
This duality led to curiosity: The One Thing wanted to know the One Mind, and vice versa. Relationship was now on the table.
The One Mind sent penetrating light rays into the enfolding waters of the One Thing, and through this union, the four elements were created.
Our Inner Magic Makers
The One Mind is mental–it’s the energy of thoughts, ideas, images, fantasties, and so on. We can liken this to the conscious self.
The One Thing is the substance that allows these mental constructs to take actual form and substance. This is equivalent to the unconscious self.
Without the interplay of both, we’d just have a bunch of ideas that go nowhere or a pile of raw material with no idea what to do with it.
But when the two are working together, they form the building blocks of existence: the four elements, which are the Magician’s tools pictured in the tarot.
The Power of Logos
In Genesis, this dynamic is described in a strikingly similar fashion:
The spirit of God moved over the face of the water, and through this interaction, everything we know in the world around us was created.
Here’s another interesting clue: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.
The concepts of the One Mind and the Word or Logos both speak to the conscious mind’s ability to create by defining.
Through our words, we take energy from the dark, roiling ocean of our unconscious selves, and we shape and forge that energy into our tangible, lived experience.
If we’re careless with our words, this vast source of energy will be directed in ways that might run very contrary to what we want and need.
Try this instead…
Starting today, take back your power by being mindful of these three all-too common phrases:
I don’t have enough time.
I can’t.
I have to.
Replace them with:
I’m creating plenty of time to [fill in the blank].
I’m choosing not to [fill in the blank].
I’m choosing/I get to [fill in the blank].
Even if you’re doing something you don’t particularly like, acknowledging that, in this moment, you are making the choice to be here, doing this undesirable thing (perhaps because it helps you achieve a larger goal), reclaims your power.
On the flip-side, whenever we insist that we have no choice, we drain our power away.
Do this enough, and you’ll really start to believe–and experience life as if–you have no power to choose and never enough time to go around.
Witches are mindful stewards of their personal power.
Take back yours, starting now.
