On Chakras

Living Prayer Wheels of Xagick

I. Prayer Wheels & Magic Bots

While Xagick remains practical, agnostic, and experientially curious about “subtle” phenomena of all kinds, it also makes good use of the (at least) metaphor of a magical body. The occult sciences always rub up closely against notions of subtle anatomy that are derived from idiosyncratic personal experience in combination with various esoteric cultural lineages.

The oldest models for describing the plural, thematic potencies of the somatic-imaginal body, appear to be animalistic. The archaic shamanic traditions, whose memetic marks are still left upon stone, bone & wood, frequently depict male and female bodies full of aroused animal spirits. Different creatures are active in different parts of ourselves. In some cases, this became formally merged with various other uses of vertical “totem” structures.

Over the last few thousand years, however, it has become fairly standard to depict these bio-psychological zones as wheels (“chakras”), spheres, or even toroidal sub-fields, arranged primarily along the spinal axis of the organism. In Dr. Wilhelm Reich’s attempts to liberate an “extra energy” from human bodies, he compared us (and animals) to worms. We are segmented or layered along the primal embryonic tube that runs from mouth to anus. Each segment defines a functional region that must remain freely active in order to coordinate the passage of energy, nutrients, and agency through the whole organism.

Sapient beings can, by introspection, observe that different affective qualities seem to reside in these different “vertical” regions and that these qualities are directly entangled with various practical and symbolic aspects of life.

We feel our romantic relationships breaking our hearts in the chest. Actors are taught to grasp their lower abdomen when a character hears about the death of their child. We open our throats to sing and dilate our genitals for pleasurable sexual contact. So it is clear, even from a very concrete standpoint, that cultural beings have relatively specialized zones for creative engagement and meaning-making.

The phenomenology and life-efficacy of these zones, or regions, or “centers,” exhibit variations. Typically, they can seem rigid or permeable, expansive or contracted, numb or sensitive, strong or weak, fixed or flowing, isolated or coordinated, lively or ennervated, relational or isolated, and more or less imbued with general intelligence.

These variables are like parameters that the occult investigator is interested in being able to adjust. Getting more intentionally involved in the phenomenology of these zones affords the opportunity to skew them in positive/normative directions, increase their role in subconscious and intentional production of changes in the world, and create a kind of adaptive skill set.

This last factor is often overlooked. I say “adaptive” because it is not necessarily true that there is an ideal condition in which the chakras should permanently rest. For example, a sexually repressed person may wish to increase the average degree to which they are “open” and “unlocked” at the lower terminal of the spine but you may also need to be able to close leaks or prevent other people from inappropriately accessing this form of your energy.

Likewise, our Voice needs to be able to both “speak up” and “keep quiet” when appropriate. Thus, the goal is not to be perpetually and fully open as a kind of cosmic sacrifice to arising circumstances but, instead, to be capable of a full range of intelligently adaptive and proactive gestures.

So the student of Xagick, who is both extending an ancient tradition and helping to create a new one, should approximate the following attitude:

• to experimentally explore the various “moves” that are possible in the chakras

• to remain flexibly indifferent to the objective ontological status of these centers

• to become intellectually conversant with numerous different models of subtle anatomy

• to be able to generate one’s own inner maps based on personal observations under various conditions

• to introduce variability and idiosyncracy into interpretations of chakras to remain free of memetic capture by standard phrasing

And since the occult point of view is strongly engaged in questions of change and transformation, we may wish to view these regions as quasi-autonomous, active, relational, creative sub-fields of the magical body.

That means that the degree of feeling, agency, connection, intelligence, and adaptive flow in these regions allows them to operate as “‘bots” — constantly spellcasting or re-enchanting the world on our behalf.

In the Tibetan hybridization of Bon shamanism & Buddhism, there is much use of prayer wheels. These are externalized structures, usually loaded with symbolic intentions or blessing aspirations, that are meant to perform magic without your conscious involvement. It only requires that you spin the wheel in order to communicate the intentions into the trans-ontological substrate of the world. You can get other people to spin the wheels for you. Or even set up little windmills that do it automatically. The point, in any case, is to outsource your magical engagement into a quasi-autonomous system.

We already have such systems built in.

So let us explore some variations of the conceptualization and practice of “centers,” wth the idea that they can be our AI-like helpers. Xagick should be oriented to improve the spinning of the inner prayer wheels.