After seeing someone here mention Mind mapping in the last few days (Seamus?) and being pretty surprised because I've been meaning to write something about this in order to clear it up in my head, I decided to write a few paragraphs for my blog. Thanks have to be given to Key23 aswell for the inspiration to use the blog as a place to write about the Occult, even if my style is more of a jotting down of ideas than a series of articles. I've found it great for helping me understand my own views on some things.
I'm mainly putting this here to see how anyone here approaches the idea of Mind maps as part of the Magickal process. Here's what I just wrote anyway (could contain unchecked typos and/or errors.) :
After trying my best for about 4 years now to make efficient Mind maps, I've started to reach a point with the current map that I'm using at the moment where I'm seeing it as an actual extention of my being. The old saying 'don't mistake the map for the territory' has always been something that I've kept in mind whilst carrying out this process, but recently the one I'm using has started to resemble more of a living glyph, a type of morphing Metasigil that seems to contain parts of my essence when I view it in certain ways.
This is in no way an easy subject here, and in struggling to explain it I'm at my limit, but if reality is looked at as one, single living entity, then this part of me has started to look more and more infused with life, like a functioning, living thing. I guess that one way to explain this is that at times when I'm either putting information into it, or just running over things to keep them in mind, Spirit seems to reach and help me by guiding me to the part of the map that represents what I'm supposed to be working on. Lending more weight to the idea that the Mind map could be a space in another dimension for Spirits to offer guidance, guidance by illuminating specific parts that need to be worked on and illuminating or showing specific parts that need to be linked. Parts that have connections to be made between them to further the development of the series of initiations that make up the Magickal and Occult paths.
I think that especially with Magick this is something that has baffled me for the simple reason that I've never seen anything outside of the Tree Of Life as a mental filing cabinet and one set of workings on the net that deals with this at any length at all. That could say more about the nature of the research I've done into Magick than anything else, but I'm not sure. It seems like such an important part of the memory of the person that practises Magick to me, but I could be way off the mark here. Not that this really matters, because I'm not attempting to make sweeping statements or pretending to be an Adept, just trying to further my own attempts at understanding this area.
I started by using a simple mental representation of the four elements and putting correspondances in each element one by one, then discovered the Tree Of Life glyph, then finally I decided to make one as much as my own creating as I wanted to. The range of things contained in them can be amazing. From having single correspondances, reminders, past experiences and dreams, right the way through to astral temples, and portals into other planes or dimensions.
The Mind map as a living, growing part of the person. It could be the case that there is no map, just an extention of the being. Something made mostly of symbols, images and glyphs that balances on the threshold between here and the otherworlds. |
