Any martial artist will tell you the value of balance – though you may be able to move, act, advance, retreat and even strike, your actions will mean little unless you come from a position of balance. This is particularly difficult for magicians though, because acts of magic result from the deliberate creation of IMbalance. Rituals and spells, acts of magical will, create tension in the form of the desired outcome, tension between what “is” and what “will be”. Only when this tension forces change is it released and balance is restored. So how does a magician act from a position of balance? Does he balance his inner world and unbalance the outer world so it moves and changes according to his will? Does he balance himself against the world directly?

To answer these questions, we must first recognize the hallmarks of Initiation, because the magician’s essence changes dramatically as he progresses toward Mastery. As an Apprentice, the magician’s guiding force comes from his Master. If he has no Master, it comes from the authors of his various books, or from a distant and impartial God. His balance comes from a position of craving the power of others. He is like a moon orbiting around the earth, drawn to the gravity of its mass but never actually touching it. His imbalanced position manifests as equilibrium, a steady and measured revolution around the object of his attention. As an Apprentice, balance comes from ambition, from a position of weakness being drawn toward strength. An Apprentice may in fact outgrow several Masters as he grows in power and discovers ever-greater sources of it, but he will always revolve around a Master until he experiences the self-centering shift of perspective Crowley referred to as Ordeal X, the discovery of his True Will and magical Name. Jung posited that the psychic apparatus of man consisted of the Animus and Anima as inner self, with the Persona being the outer self or personality. In males, the inner self would be the feminine Anima, while for females the inner self would be the masculine Animus, the opposite expression of Self. The “Anima Process” is actually much more complex than needs to be gone into for the purposes of this writing.

Having experienced Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel (True Self, True Will, Aumakua, Buddha-Self), the magician is now an Adept. He no longer needs a Master to guide him, as he now receives his spiritual instruction directly from his HGA. His balance now comes from a position of mortality, revolving in equilibrium around his immortal self, the part of him that is part of the Divine essence. Many Adepts are tempted to discount their mortal identities entirely, considering it an artificial shell or shroud somehow “obscuring” the light of their HGA, and a hindrance to their spiritual work. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The mortal self is their source of balance – it is the planet which revolves around the sun of their HGA, receiving its light and warmth to generate the life which the sun is unable to produce alone. This is the critical lesson of Adepthood – LIFE. The task of the Adept is to live, to go forth and experience the world as a magician. His Apprenticeship is over, and his journey must take place so he may experience all the world for the edification of his soul. The Adept’s balance comes from a position of power, being his own man while not yet being his own source of Spirit. While his adventures and experiences may all carry him through varying degrees of being in power vs being in weakness, the Adept’s balance comes from his relationship to his HGA. Losing this focus, he would become no more than a common dabbler.

When he comes to the Abyss, the magician faces the most difficult trial of all. He must find a way to balance himself against himself, and achieve the power that comes from no outside source. “Everyone carries a shadow,” Jung wrote, “and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” The more of his own evil a person compartmentalizes in his Shadow the less of an actual man he is, and in times of stress or disorientation the Shadow will break free and overwhelm his sensibilities. The magician’s proper perspective (as much as I hesitate to make such statements) should incorporate as much of his Shadow as possible throughout, if for no other reason than to prevent this exact thing from happening.

In Freudian terms, he must balance the Ego against the Id, that the Superego may finally reign supreme. Most Western traditions teach that this is done by eliminating the Ego and assuming the identity of the Superego. This is, in fact, the Right Hand Path approach to the Abyss and in this situation the Right Hand Master achieves balance by becoming the Monad, divesting himself of all that is not in balance, banishing both the Id and Ego to the best of his ability. The difficulty of this is that, while it is fairly easy to deny the evils of one’s soul, it is very difficult to similarly disavow the good one has done. The Right Hand Master is neither good nor evil, neither mortal nor immortal within himself. He is in simplest terms the pure expression of his True Will. It is in this state that many mystics pass on some of mankind’s greatest teachings, unhindered by human perspective. It was this approach to the Abyss most popularly proclaimed by Aleister Crowley, regardless of whether or not it was the approach he himself actually practiced.

The Left Hand Path takes a different approach to the Abyss. In balancing himself against himself, the Left Hand Master discards neither good nor evil, but accepts both within himself. His balance comes from embracing both his Ego and Id, both the light and darkness within himself in all their extremes. Every wrath balances against a corresponding love, every passion against a lament, every creation against a destruction, every gift against a theft. The Left Hand Master achieves his balance from the revolution of his light and dark extremes around the core of his True Self. It can be said this is the more difficult of the two paths to Mastery, with some accuracy. It is easier to disavow one’s good than accept one’s evil, and more difficult still to keep the two in balance if one does accept them. Also, the retention of the “lower” mortal perspective tends to reduce or distort the pearls of wisdom which spring forth from the Left Hand Master, while in return it offers him a greater power in the world than that of any other magical state of being.

In summary, balance is to be had at all points in the magical career, if the magician simply knows where to keep his focus, and to strive at all times to be the worthy equal of his opposite.