The Sorcery of Subjectivity
Its easy to access the illusions of life by venturing beyond the portal of our everyday capacities. What about the ordinary and mundane - where is the magic today?
Alchemy seeks to transform matter into higher states—like base metals into gold. At its core, it tries to find magic in the mundane. But where is magic found in today's world? Or perhaps, what are we deluded by? What is the thing we cannot see, or do not notice?
"We have art in order not to die of the truth."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Lets imagine.
Imagine you live in a stone-age farming village. I arrive as a stranger to your people. I enter the centre to command a gathering. I tell your people that I have super powers, that you should bow down before me.
I wield no weapon, and carry nothing but a sack and creeping smile. Of course, you laugh. Maybe I join in the laughing, perhaps a little manicly. Your leader walks forward to challenge my authority. He holds up a weapon and points toward me. People grab hands from behind and restrain.
Its suddenly still for a moment, I glance up at the Sun. I smile, “You have angered me”. I start laughing, uncontrollably. “Feel the wraith that I’ll rain down upon thee!”
I howl like a beast as the light of the sun fades. You all look up - a black edge starts to creep over the light of the sun. All of you start to back away slowly. A beat of silence before gasps.
It gets darker, people falling over themselves backwards. Throwing themselves to the ground. The reality is becoming shrouded in darkness.
Just as all is lost, darkness has fallen, I rise and hold my palms to the sky like Jesus.
What is this unearthly sorcery?
“Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"
- The Prestige (2006)
The light starts to creep back as you bow before me. Soon it's all over. As if nothing ever happened. From this point I am a myth. Untouchable. With this sorcery I could be named a god, subjectively. And yet, this is an eclipse. A spectacle. What gave me power over the sun?
For this trick I only need to be aware of observable rhythms and cycles. This scenario calls upon powers of observation and deep listening. After that it’s down to the spectator to colour in the illusion.
It is not the eclipse that made you pledge allegiance, or the mini mime show. It wasn’t cosmic capability, but mastery of subjective experience—leveraging what the mind yearns to see. The idea was seeded in your mind by the constellation of your subjective experience. As we try to recognise, to determine correlation from causality.
The stranger simply synchronised with an eclipse to enable imagination fill the void. Once it dominoes into real life, whether it was deception or superhuman capacity is irrelevant. The placebo effect is real. Imagination ripples into reality.
The ability to trigger our own placebo effect gives us an advantage statistically to be 30-40% better at any task than without the ability. Shamans and alchemists have long grasped this wizardry of perception. Their rituals use earthly elements to access supernatural realms—binding reality to a collective trance state. Even the human brain harbours its own consciousness-bending chemicals, as science reveals. These compounds blur the lines, unveiling realities typically invisible.
Discoveries in neuroscience show that the human brain has its own consciousness-altering chemicals including hallucinogens such as dimethyltyrptamine (DMT). Darwinian reasoning leads us to believe that these drugs would not be present if they did not produce an evolutionary advantage.
Humans have used substances for thousands of years to disrupt the way we see patterns in the world. The more we vary our perception of the world, the more we become aware of what is invariant.
Such alchemical technologies, whether external substances or internal states, share an uncanny power: revealing that reality depends deeply on the observer. Our spontaneous relationship to reality informs our ability to distinguish fact from fiction. Not for theorising but existential survival.
Like an optical illusion, a slight shift in perspective cascades into vastly different worlds. Microdosing this subjectivity lets us toggle between versions of the real.
“The state of man's mind, or the elementary phase of mind which he so far possesses, conforms precisely to the state of the world as he so far views it”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
It seems reality's very magic lies not in the outside realm, but in the relationship between inner and outer. An eclipse alone holds no spell, until matched by receptive minds. All alchemy works this interplay, mixing inner psyche and outer stimuli into altered states. Any attempt to transform reality without this mix neglects the sorcery already within us.
So where is magic found today? Even glimpsing subjective, sorcery shows that the realm of the strange, mystical and otherworldly dwells secretly inside all of us already. True magic starts as an inner art.
Which illusions still charm a mind that is initiated into magic?
Once we realize that our own consciousness is conjuring up these illusions - that our mind is the magician casting spells of perception - will we still fall for the same illusions? Will the same tricks still dazzle us even when we see them as products of our own creation?
"The so-called civilised man has forgotten the trickster. He remembers him only figuratively and metaphorically, when, irritated by his own ineptitude, he speaks of fate playing tricks on him or of things being bewitched. He never suspects that his own hidden and apparently harmless shadow has qualities whose dangerousness exceeds his wildest dreams."
Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 9.1:
On The Psychology of the Trickster Figure
Even when we become aware of how our subjectivity distorts reality, we still willingly indulge in certain comforting illusions or biases. The mind free from illusion may be revealed as the ultimate magician, weaving reality as it pleases. But it may choose some enchantments over raw, unfiltered truths.
In a self-aware mind that's seen behind the curtain of perception, some illusions may still retain their charm and appeal. It may turn out that conjuring reality, not just passively perceiving it, is what consciousness most delights in.
Fin.