How Enchanting!

The past few days, I have been engaged in the art of enchantment. I don't mean charming people with my smile. I am a wandmaker and that means being an enchanter. You know, like Tim the Enchanter in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Only fewer explosions.

When I enchant a wand it is a very personal act. One that involves me and the magic wand that I have made with my own hands, my own cleverness, and my own aesthetic sense. I have put a lot of energy into the wand by the time it reaches my altar as a finished work of art. At that point the physical work may be done, but it is time to really finish the art through the ritual of enchantment. To enchant an object is to sing it into a new existence, to use the voice to give the object new life and purpose.

Part of the work, as I perform it, is to enchant into the wand its core of imaginal energy. That is how magic works -- through the imaginal energy which I have decided to call the Ætheridyne. In my novel about a young girl learning to be a wizard in a world of druids, that's the word I use. "Energy" which in Greek merely alludes to work, seems inadequate as a descriptor. And "magic" is also very inadequate because of its many connotations, most of which are completely misleading. Some wizards have tried to use the Indian word "prana" for the force or substance of magic. Some have used the Polynesian word "mana" which has some of the right sense in its cultural context, but still isn't an English word.

Aetheridyne draws upon the Western alchemical and engineering vocabulary, alluding to Aether, as the fifth element, and to power with the Greek root dyne, which in English we find in words like "dynamo." In the web comic "Girl Genius" (http://www.girlgeniusonline.com), one of the great houses of "sparks" (the sometimes evil geniuses and mad scientists) is called the House of Heterodyne. This word combines the root "hetero" (as in "heterosexual") with "dyne," and so means  "different power." I don't know the intentions of the creators of the comic, but to me this "different power" is the fifth element. So, in my terminology,  Ætheridyne is a substance, a thing, a property, a power. It is something you have, and it is something you project or give to another person or object.

Aetheridyne is what one uses to do magic. That is, it is the medium in which reality is manipulated in what we call a "spiritual" plane. The wand carved of wood is imbued with the Light of this other power. Not thermodynamic, nor kinetic energy, nor any force of gravity or magnetism. All of these powers the Alchemists experimented with. But what they were searching for -- the true Philosopher's Stone -- was that underlying substance from which all causation is created. It is the pure power of Creation itself.

Thought of as the Will of God, or Masonically speaking, the Grand Architect of the Universe -- this power is indeed related to will and intention. But what are these? What exactly is our "will"? Is it an emotion? A thought? A feeling? An action? None of these words seem right. Our Will and our intentions, as agents in the cosmos are better understood as ripples on the pond of reality. The cosmos (Greek for "order") is ordered according to Will. God's Will is, by definition, that organizing principle which produces the natural order. The so-called "Laws" of nature or the physical world, are part of this order. But as physicists in the post-Newtonian era have discovered, the metaphor of "law" doesn't really do it justice. The cosmic order is composed, it turns out, of chaos and natural laws are not always applicable at every level of reality.

Ætheridyne, or the Æther itself, which is the underlying substance of existence, are fundamentally ambiguous and unpredictable, even paradoxical. They do not conform to predictable "laws" or rules of behavior because they are the very basis of order itself. From the wizardly point of view, natural phenomena are repeated and predictable only because someone, somewhere along the line of time, desired them to be so. We small creatures have that power of Will, but not enough of it to usually alter that deeply established order. In religious terms, we cannot work against God's will, or the will of the gods. Gods and goddesses throughout time have acted as creators and destroyers, making and dissolving order. And often interfering with each other's will.

We do not have a cosmos created solely by Aphrodite. If we did it would be nothing but beauty, harmony, and love. Nor is it a cosmos created solely by Mercury, which would be a world of wit, ideas, words, and communication among all things. Nor is it solely a world of Zeus or Hera or Poseidon or Vulcan.  What we have is a world created by the combined willpower of many gods and goddesses, so that it is full of contradictory forces, and conflicting layers of order. Aphrodite's free love clashes with Hera's desire for marriage, fidelity, and family. Mercury's wanderlust clashes with Hestia's devotion to the hearthfire as the center of human life. Vulcan's earth and its powers clashes (quite literally) with Poseidon's oceans and seas. Zeus's thunderbolt vies with Poseidon's trident, making rain and storms that bring fertility (like the promiscuity of Zeus) but also floods and destruction.

These powers all exist within the Ætheridyne wielded by the mage. When I enchant a wand or other object -- such as a potion, or spell-candle, or ring -- it is not only thought and feeling that must enter into the object. It is also my own life-force. It is prana indeed, that energy or power that flows in our bodies and is harnessed and cultivated by yogis. It is the Taoist's Qi, and the druid's nwyvre. We feel it flow through us. It flows through body, mind, and spirit, and it flows through the wizard's wand.

The act of enchantment combines gesture, sound, smell, touch, and symbolic action. It begins with the creation of sacred space and sacred time. That creation takes the magus out of the ordinary plane of existence and opens a place from which he or she can use imagination to alter the world of ordinary things.  What we take to be normal, is mutable, from the point of view of the astral plane of existence.  The astral plane is the level of existence that is influenced directly by the stars.  Or put differently, it is the level of reality in which the stars and planets create patterns of influence upon reality. 

When I say reality, I do not mean merely material reality or material existence.  For reality also includes thoughts and feelings, images, and words, intentions, desires, and actions which may oar may not be physical.  Thus, if we say, for example, that the planet Venus has influence on a situation or action, or body, we mean that the force of love and attraction, the deep wisdom of sexuality and beauty, lays its pattern upon reality in all its forms.  It may make a beautiful male for female body which is sexually arousing; it may create sexual arousal quite apart from conventional ideas of beauty; it may arouse feelings of attraction that have nothing to do with sexuality; it may evoke beauty for its own sake; and it may create harmony in all of its physical, mental, and emotional forms.

Moreover, all these creations are relative.  Sexual beauty is not an absolute, but something that is shaped by culture and individual taste.  Sexual attraction -- or indeed any kind of attraction -- is based in deep connections and resonances between the two people or things being attracted to each other.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it is also characterized by certain common responses to harmony and proportion.  Beauty can be conjured in the shape of a smile or the shape of an eye.  It can exist in the infinitesimal combination of physical proportions, shapes, and qualities.  Yet, while some people will agree that a particular man or woman is "beautiful," still the power of attraction working in persona between individuals who meet each other will be far more complex than the mere ideals. 

What then does "enchantment" have to do with beauty?  We are taught to believe that they are somehow related, and I think that is true.  For true enchantment ought to be grounded in proportion, regularity, and order.  When we look at a wand that has been carved and designed by a wandmaker (or by any person), we judge its power of enchantment by its beauty, not as an extrinsic quality alone, but as some kind of intrinsic merit that it derives from the sincere labor of the artist.  So too with enchantments.  For enchantments are also works of art.  The enchantment of a wand is just as much a part of its beauty and quality as the carving on the wood or the finishing.  The polish on a wand, if done right, contains the energy and intention of the maker, yeilding a work of art that is not merely beautiful in some extrinsic sense, but also is powerful because of this focused attention and intention with which it has been imbued. 

The power of enchantment lies in the projection of Ætheridyne.  That is, the pattern of intention that is created out of this Ætherial substance.  A physical object is in a sense made of Ædtheridyne for it underlies all matter and energy in the material plane.  It is when particular intentions (the will or agency of the mage) is placed into the substance that Ætheridyne becomes the vehicle of power that can alter reality.

So, here is to the adoption of my neologism: Ætheridyne.  The power of the Æther set into a pattern of intention, action, agency.  This is the true dynamic force of the cosmos. It is the power that used to be referred to as "mind over matter."  Not merely determination to get a job done, but also the spiritual energy that goes forth from a person when that determination is set.

Gentlemen and Ladies, I give you the Ætheridyne!