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Working with focus. There are times to relax and allow your awareness to become diffused, but this is not one of them. This is a propitious time to work with focus and determination, fully engaged with what you are doing. Strike now because the iron is hot.
Striking while the iron is hot means a time to get to work because your influence and will can create useful change.
When iron is hot, it is malleable. There is a temporary window of opportunity where it is relatively plastic, and we can give it a lasting form through effort.
Aleister Crowley’s definition of magic is:
“The science and art of creating change in conformity with will.”
What are the areas of life where applying your will can create the most effective and life-affirming change?
Using myself as example, at age 50 (when I wrote the card), the iron is no longer hot if I want to break athletic records. But the iron feels very hot for writing, working on the oracle, and other creative tasks at this age. At 50, my cognitive/creative skills have matured, but I am not so old that dementia or lack of vitality are holding me back. The iron feels very hot creatively, and I am able, at this phase, to create many new things out of the unformed mass of zeros and ones in the digital forge of cyberspace. If I take good care of my psyche and physical health, this type of iron may likely remain hot for many more years. (Still hot at 66 when I revised this card.) On the other hand, I can’t presume on that continuing because I could have a fatal accident, or suffer neurological damage, etc. Therefore, I dare not waste the hot iron that is available to be shaped today.
In some areas of life, the iron may be hot only during a narrow window of time. There may be an opportunity to be a positive influence on someone who is quickly passing through your life. Perhaps an inspiration has just welled up. If you act on it now, you can give it a decisive and satisfying form. But if you wait, that particular piece of iron may have cooled and rigidified and will be much harder to work on. And although it may be less fulfilling, there are time-sensitive chores that need to get done, and if not worked on now, will only become more laborious and wasteful of resources later on.
Where is the hot, glowing iron in your life, especially today? Consider this an auspicious time to get to work on it.
If you already know where the hot iron is, and it is a question of skillful means to give it new form, you may want to consider some of Crowley’s essential principles of magic:
I Magik is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.
II. Postulate ANY required Change may be effected by the application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner through the proper medium to the proper object.
III Theorems
1. Every intentional act is a Magical Act.
2. Every successful act has conformed to the postulate.
3. Every failure proves that one or more requirements of the postulate have not been fulfilled.
4. The first requisite of causing any change is thorough qualitative and quantitative understanding of the conditions. (Illustration: The most common cause of failure in life is ignorance of one’s own True Will, or of the means by which to fulfill that Will…he may really be a painter, and yet fail to understand and to measure the difficulties peculiar to that career.)
5. The second requisite of causing any change is the practical ability to set in right motion the necessary forces.
8. A man whose conscious will is at odds with his True Will is wasting his strength. He cannot hope to influence his environment efficiently.
9. A man who is doing his True Will has the inertia of the Universe to assist him.
15. Every force in the Universe is capable of being transformed into any other kind of force by using suitable means. There is thus an inexhaustible supply of any particular kind of force that we may need.
16. The application of any given force affects all the orders of being which exist in the object to which it is applied, whichever of those orders is directly affected.
17. A man may learn to use any force so as to serve any purpose, by taking advantage of the above theorems.
18. He may attract to himself any force of the Universe by making himself a fit receptacle for it, establishing a connection with it, and arranging conditions so that it’s nature compels it to flow toward him.
19. Man’s sense of himself as separate from, and opposed to, the Universe is a bar to his conducting its currents. It insulates him.
(Illustration: A popular leader is most successful when he forgets himself, and remembers only “The Cause.” Self-seeking engenders jealousies and schism.)
20. A man can only attract and employ the forces for which he is really fitted.
21. There is no limit to the extent of the relations of any man with the Universe in essence; for as soon as man makes himself one with any idea, the means of measurement cease to exist. But his power to utilize that force is limited by his mental power and capacity, and by the circumstances of his human environment.
23. Magik is the Science of understanding oneself and one’s conditions. It is the Art of applying that understanding in action.
25. Every man must do Magik each time that he acts or even thinks, since a thought is an internal act whose influence ultimately affects action, though it may not do so at the time.
39 …every act of your life is a magical act; whenever from ignorance, carelessness, clumsiness, or what not, you come short of perfect artistic success, you inevitably register failure, discomfort, frustration.
Why should you study and practice Magik? Because you can’t help doing it, and you had better do it well than badly.
Accordingly, the most important preliminary to any Magical operation is to make sure that its object is not only harmonious with, but necessary to, your Great Work.
“Thou has no right but to do thy will.” Every act, therefore, with the thoughts and words which determine its performance, is a sacrament.
To refuse to fulfill any of one’s possibilities is the direct negation of the Great Work.
See:
The Path of the Numinous — Living and Working with the Creative Muse
Using available time: Temporal Fencing and Life Fields
A simple, concise and practical approach to navigating effectively through the day:
Pathfinding/Day-Mapping
If it feels like the iron is resisting you: Mechanical Resistance Matrix
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