Names are important. Naming something gives it identity and substance, and condenses it out from the vaporous complexity of the rest of the world. When you name something, that something solidifies and you can play with solid things. I wanted a name for my life coaching business which described how I married my value system to my working methodology.
Good names describe the essence of the thing named and this is especially true of the services I offer. I had wrestled with the branding of my life coaching business for months because I couldn’t find that kind of close alignment of myself with the coaching I offer. The naming business had me stumped.
Then after several different namings I didn’t feel wholly comfortable with, I had an extremely vivid dream.
My dream…
In the dream, I was floating on my back in a starry firmament. I felt light and at ease, watching a sea of stars above me. The stars began to coalesce until they resolved into the figure of a beautiful woman hovering above me, body full of light.
I have to say here that, at the time I was in dream mode. I’ve had vivid dreams all my life, and when I receive the gift of their message – and there is often a message – my customary cynicism is not at play in me. Instead, in this dream, I felt a wondrous awe. I was in the presence of the Goddess. She was enormous and arched over me like Nuit, the Egyptian Goddess of Infinite Space.
‘Call your business ‘Find Your Magick’’, she said. ‘Sort out all the things you offer into four categories which relate to the four elements of Earth, Water, Air and Fire. Use a pentagram as a logo and put the four elements on four of the pentagram points. Put ‘Magick’ on the uppermost fifth point and explain how the Magick inside people emerges when the other four elements are activated and work together.’
You just don’t argue with this sort of dream.
On waking, I grabbed pen and paper and wrote my entire website copy within a few short hours. Find Your Magick. Transformational Life Coaching.
Magick is not Harry Potter.
Magick means many things to many people. Entertainers pulling coins from behind children’s ears. Hogwarts undergrads jabbing their wands to make things fly about. Beautiful young women, naked and bound, lying on altars awaiting the abuse of men and goaty devils. Glastonbury types dressed in Tolkeinware running workshops on how to see faeries. The list of frisky, flakey connotations lists endlessly and suggests to me that calling my life coaching site Find Your Magick somewhat risky, to say the least.
However, I find it best not to argue with a dream as vivid as this one.
So why magick with a K?
Well, doing so distinguishes my meaning of the word from the long scroll of the flimsy stuff.
Also, explaining what I mean by ‘magick’ unpacks my life coaching philosophy.
The first person to name magic magick was Aleister Crowley at the turn of the twentieth century.
He wrote that magick refers to the art and science of making changes happen in conformity with the Will.
The art and science of making changes…. in other words, you are practising magick any time you want to make any changes in your life regardless of how ethereal or mundane your actions. Want that high-powered job? True you could cast a magick circle and summon a spirit to influence your interviewer. But investing in a decent suit and making sure you stay sober before the morning of the interview are equally powerful acts of magick; shazam! They transform you from slobby frog into sharp-looking bright-eyed prince. And the prince wins out hands down, over and over.
…in conformity with the Will. We need our actions to serve us well. That means that they need to be aligned with our value system so that we can live a life which fulfils us. Crowley’s use of Will, capital W, refers to the part of ourselves that sets goals according to our value system and determines the actions we need to achieve them. These are our magickal acts. The bright-eyed prince is a magician; the interviewee who spent the previous night watching box sets with a bottle of wine is not.
We align ourselves with our value system when we clear our minds of all our limiting beliefs and pointless self-criticisms, which is why we activate the key of Deep Insight, which gives us our compass of clarity. We activate Core Vitality and Peak Performance to speed ourselves to our goals, moving straight and swift as an arrow.
Magick with a K
And there’s more. Why did Crowley add a K to magic?
K is the 11th letter of the alphabet.
11 = 5 + 6.
5 is the number of the self in magickal literature, referring to the five petals of the Mystic Rose, symbol of the Self.
6 is the number of the world, represented by a calvary cross. A calvary cross is the shape made by unpacking a six-sided cube.
The Rose is nailed to the Cross forming the Rosy Cross which has been a key occult symbol for 400 years.
The Rosy Cross, and thus the letter K, signifies the union, or congruence of microcosm (humans like you and me) and macrocosm (the world we inhabit).
In other words, Magick is the art and science of discovering and using our integrity. Integrity refers to the integration of ourselves – our body, mind and speech and value system – with the world we inhabit – friends, family, partners, colleagues, nature and our culture. The removal of everything which causes us to doubt or dislike ourselves (through Deep Insight) working with the removal of sluggishness and procrastination (Core Vitality, Peak Performance) automatically moves us towards this integration. And we fully integrate when we meet the world with kindness and compassion, hence the fourth key in my life coaching program, that of Altruism. Our most fulfilling life is one in which we can laugh, live and love one another. None of us are islands. (See Altruism Is Your Superpower for more on this).
Magick, then.
Some of yours is probably already partially unlocked.
So let’s get to work on finding the rest.
