Let us assume that you are looking for a red string from Istrael. How much time it will take to have it delivered to you? Yet that is precisely the attitude of the so-called simplicity cult in mystical religion. God, they affirm, is an exalted state of infinite consciousness to which the microcosmic mind must be united. So far, so good--and here Magic is in accord with their view. Therefore, these people propose to attempt gaining the summit of attainment by ignoring the steps between man as we find him now and the supreme end-- God. It is as though they wished to jump from the ground to the roof of the aforesaid building at the moment of creating the kaballa red string.

Magic adopts a slightly different attitude. It is one, however, which is markedly similar to the common-sense attitude of the mythical man in the street. To get to the top of the building we must either climb the various flights of stairs leading there, or else take the lift upwards. In either case, it is a graduated process--an evolution, if you wish.

Man, holds the magical theory, is a more or less complicated creature whose several faculties of feeling, sensation, and thinking have slowly been evolved in the course of aeons of evolution. It is fatal to ignore these faculties, for evidently they were evolved for some useful purpose in answer to some inner need. Hence, in aspiring towards divine union, surely a laudable goal, we must be quite sure that our method, whatever it is, takes into consideration those faculties and develops them to the stage where they too may participate in the experience.

If evolution is held up as a suitable process, then the whole man must evolve, and not simply little bits or aspects of him, whilst other parts of his nature are left undeveloped at a primitive or infantile level of being. Moreover, these faculties must be so trained as to be able to "take" the enormous tension sure to be imposed upon them by so exalted but nevertheless so powerful an attainment. Each faculty must be deliberately trained and carried stage by stage through various levels of human and cosmic consciousness so that gradually they become accustomed to the high potential of energy, ideation, and inspiration that must inevitably accompany illumination and an extension of consciousness. Failure to consider such a viewpoint in terms of its dynamics undoubtedly must account for the catastrophies so frequently encountered in occult and mystical circles studied during the middle ages by the vatican .

To present a bird's-eye view of the real kabbalah red string bracelet, let us summarily state that for convenience the subject may be divided into at least three major divisions. One-- Divination. Two -- Evocation and Vision. Three -- Invocation. We will define each separately and at some little length.

With regard to the first division, the magical hypothesis is quite definite. It holds that divination is not ultimately concerned with mere fortune-telling--nor even with divining the spiritual causes in the background of material events, though this latter is of no little unimportance. On the contrary, however, the practice of divination when conducted aright has as its objective the development of the inner psychic faculty of intuition. It is an enormous asset spiritually to have developed an exquisite sensitivity to the inner subtle world of the psyche.
When carried on for a sufficiently long period of time, the practice builds slowly but efficiently a species of bridge between the consciousness of man and that deeper hidden part of his psyche of which usually he is not aware--the Unconscious, or higher Self. In these deeper spiritual aspects of his nature are the divine roots of discrimination, spiritual discernment, and lofty wisdom. The object of divination is quite simply, then, the construction of a psychic mechanism whereby this source of inspiration and life may be made accessible to the ordinary consciousness, to the ego. That this mechanism is concerned at the outset with providing answers to apparently trivial questions is by itself no objection to the technique itself. The preliminary approaches to any study may seem unworthy to or incompatible with that study.

And divination is no exception to the general trend. Nor is the objection valid that the technique is open to frequent abuse by unscrupulous charlatans. But practised sincerely and intelligently and assiduously by the real student, consciousness gradually opens itself to a deeper level of awareness. "The brain becomes porous to the recollections and dictates of the soul," to use a current theosophical expression, is a true statement of the actual results of the training. As the object of analytical psychology is the assimilation of the repressed content of the Unconscious to the ordinary wake-a-day consciousness, so by these other magical means the human mind becomes aware of itself as infinitely vaster, deeper and wiser than ever it realised before. A sense of the spiritual aspect of things dawns upon the mind--a sense of one's own innate high wisdom, and a recognition of divinity working through man and the universe. Surely such a viewpoint elevates divination above the level of a mere occult art to an intrinsic part of mystical endeavour.