A concept I always like to talk to comrades about is the idea of a “Personal Utopia”. The idea comes as a counter point to the perils warned about in Thomas Moore’s “Utopia” where Moore is making a joke about how unreal and impossible a communist society with perfect tolerance and no private property is. I agree, that perfect world is impossible, but we should still imagine and strive for it as best we can because it will make our imperfect world better.

This is a useful tool in manifesting change in politics, but I think something similar works for personal change. Joseph Campbell does too. In his foundations compilation of his work “Pathways to Bliss” he makes a claim about the purpose of myth as being stories about perfect beings who inspire us to do better.

The Greater Goodness

The main figures I think Campbell is concerned with are more vague ideas of generically good virtues. Something impossible to really define and makes us constantly meditate and reflect on what it means to be [virtue]. These are your Jesuses, Zoroasters, Hermeses, etc figures. Entities that we view as flawless embodiment or even bringers of knowledge that we will simply never replicate, but who’s great work we must attempt to achieve salvation, enlightenment, etc.

I like to think of it as Goal Setting. When we start our path of enlightenment, however we do it, I don’t think any of us really have a set hard goal. Often we’re just curious about the world or morality. But eventually we start to find the themes in our own thinking, and we can figure out the long term goals of our practice and then how to develop our own Prophet. Or you could simply appropriate one for your own cause. Hell, a purely fictitious entity is as valid in my eyes as anyone else. But it’s still important to feel like that entity is beyond human in some way.

Personally, I would hold Ged/Sparrowhawk from the Earthsea Cycle here. He’s a character with a lot of meaning to me as I loved the Earthsea books as a kid. As well he is the embodiment of what I want to be along my magickal journey. Calm, learned, not afraid to do hard work, and helpful. These are virtues I value and I want to embody as best I can. As a bonus, Ged comes with a large corpus of tales of failure and success that I can further derive meaning from. Lessons I can ponder and apply to my own life. And it is all written in a damn good way. There is no need for a Greater Goodness to be represented by shoddy or archaic prose, but that may help you make an entity sacred.

Now there are two more classes of entities within a religious framework. There is the lesser goodness and the cosmic probability of religion.

Lesser Goodness

On a path to self enlightenment, there are often sub goals to the one main unobtainable goal. You decide that to be like Ged you must follow his example and seek a structured education. You find your school and it’s going well, but you are terrible at finding good resources for research and it’s holding you back from being closer to Ged. You now have a lesser goal on your path to your great work and thus need a lesser goodness to invoke and help guide you on your path. You need, Levar Burton.

Lesser Goodness Entities I like to view as the saints of Christianity or the incredibly specific gods of pagan traditions. I said our libraries and research entity is Levar Burton, but it could very well be Saint Jerome or the Egyptian Seshat. They are here to help with very small hurdles in life (or at least very small in the grand scheme of life).

These lesser goods maybe aren’t perfect examples of humanity like our Greater Good, but they do need to hold some of the greater virtues that we desire to claim for ourselves. Burton works for me because he is both the Reading Rainbow Guy and Commander Geordi La Forge. He’s the embodiment of bookish wonder and problem solving. Importantly, he’s closer to human than our Ged figure and is thus possible to replicate.

What’s the point of these figures anyways?

Glad you asked. The point to me is that we are human and we do well with an accountability buddy. Someone who we can disappoint and also make proud. We desire human like approval to focus on our goals. The problem is that a lot of what we do to grow as a person is completely imperceptible to the average individual. We can write spiritual journey blogs or books on how things have gone, but that’s a much after the fact type of psychological reward. You need something to motivate you now.

The greater Goodness is supposed to be something outside of reach that we must always strive for to always better ourselves. It is an entity with which we can have a sort of personal relationship with, talk to, ask for advice, etc. Though it will never really answer those requests, the mere act of expressing your hardships to an entity we perceive as listening is enough to motivate us further. Similarly, the Lesser Goodness entities are those with which we can build a sort of community in our mind over if we so choose. Each with their own specific goals and interests. Each simply and extension of our own mind.

I like to think about Erving Goffman here and the concept of Dramaturgy. The idea is that we are actors in a series of plays depending on the social role. You are many selves and each self has a different role in each play. The you that talks to your parents is different from the you that talks to your sibling which is different still from the you that talks to your spouse. This illustrates that we know a wide range of roles in a wide range of conversations. We already have multiple selves within us capable of giving different types of advice and perspectives. Why not use those selves internally? You won’t be getting any wisdom from a perceived entity that knows of anything you don’t already know of anyways. Truly, we just need someone to talk things out with.

Mirrors, Altars, and Tarot

There is a practical way to manifest these conversations and they all have the same psychological trick whether you’re talking to yourself in the mirror, Using a Tarot Deck, or praying at an altar. You are simply personifying something inanimate. You are giving life to a thing because you already know what the role is of the other person in this conversation and you probably already have a subconscious answer to your question.

Consider, you’ve just caught your spouse cheating. Distraught by the news you look for someone to confide this information to and determine the next steps. Here you have realistically 2 options. 1) A close friend 2) Yourself.

In scenario 1) you confide in your friend how upset and betrayed and awful you feel about the ordeal. You confide that you’ll never be able to look at the spouse the same way again. You know if your heart that this relationship is over and talking it out loud has helped you come to this conclusion. Your friend has offered really little more than an ear to yap into.

In scenario 2) you talk to a mirror sobbing about the situation. You affirm out loud that you feel betrayed and awful about the whole ordeal. You moan to yourself that the relationship will never be the same and that the relationship is over. You have come to the same out loud conclusion.

In Scenario 2) you could do something similar with a set of Tarot Cards. You confide in the cards that your relationship is in shambles and say to them all the details of how betrayed and awful you feel, but you still desire guidance. You draw “DEATH” right side up. Now, this card means you will experience major change in life as an era ends. You interpret this as meaning the relationship has run it’s course as the damage is done. You recognize that the relationship is over.

In Scenario 2) you could also pray to your Lesser Goodness of Love and Relationships say, I don’t know, Gomez and Morticia Adams. So you light your black and white (or neon green and pink) altar candles, burn an cigarette scented incense, and confide to them your woes. Tell them all about how you feel betrayed and awful. How you don’t think you’ll ever trust your spouse again. And finally how you don’t think the relationship will last.

In all of these cases, you probably haven’t been convinced of anything, but having the moment to talk about or think about how you feel often let’s your sort your thoughts. You can now see the logical answer that must be done and truthfully it was always up to you whether or not you followed the suggestions of your friend, or cards, or the Adams’s anyways.

Demons

Another fun way of divining your own soul for personal truths is through Goetia or Demon Summoning.

The Lesser Key of Solomon is a fascinating book that came into my life at a pretty pivotal moment. I had just lost my roommate (not dead, just got a private room) and I had fallen out of love with engineering. My relationship was quite rocky and I had been thinking about changing majors to History specifically medieval European history. With an empty room, no desire to do better in my actually classes that semester, and a manual on summoning demons (not to mention a sick enjoyment out of upsetting some christian but not religious friends) I was pretty primed to go through with a ritual.

So I go through a weak facsimile of the proper Goetic ritual. I forgo parchment for printer paper, I scrawl the shittiest Hebrew ever on the floor, I even use electric candles and an essential oil diffuser in leu of candles and incense (it was a dorm so no “open flames”).

I do my best to cleanse and put on my best clothes (might have done it naked now that I think about it) and I summon Zagan (Spirit 61) because he “makes fools wise” and that’s what I wanted. Some wisdom on what I should do.

Truthfully, I kinda already knew what I needed to do and after performing the ritual and talking to myself because magick’s not real, I half assed it too hard, or some third thing, I manifested my own deep affirmations. I went and changed majors, dropped my engineering classes and started reading whatever history books I wanted.

God herself

At this point I think it’s clear that, to me, the workings of magick and religion are completely psychological. Until a Chaos Magician fire balls me or a witch turns me into a newt, I’ll probably not be convinced of this conviction. However, I hope it’s also clear that I do have a deep appreciation for these modes of self exploration. So much respect even, that I believe there is a god of sorts: The Cosmic Probability.

In short, god is the indifferent dice roller of this universe. It is either truly indifferent towards our individual success or actively enjoys the downfall of human kind. Yet, we can perceive this entity as a thing with which we can try to appease to achieve our goals or a being we can blame for our uncontrollable failure.

Think about the relationships between the Goodnesses and God. The Goodnesses are things with which we can confide and emulate to help us achieve positive change. God is the power with which that change is permitted or denied.

In my Goetic practice it is this thing with a thousand annoying names called god that I am summoning and binding these demons with which to confide in.

In the conversations with the Tarot Deck of the Adams’s, there is some power that is granting me the ability to facilitate those conversations.

In the Greater Goodness, the chosen entity often has some super natural power as a reward for their perfection. You can pick whatever you chose, but historically it has been a Jesus, a Buddha, a Moses, a Zoroaster, etc, etc.

All that said, I don’t know if we need a god. It can just as easily be replaced with willpower, intentions, the weave, etc.

Hell, you don’t even need the concept magick at all really. Imaginary life coaches or therapists you talk to is honestly like 90% of magick. The rest is mindfulness in some shape or form.

Conclusions

Building a pantheon of deities is a fun thing to do if you want one. It’s fun to recognize that we can split ourselves into specialized life coaches to confide in and even to recognize that there is an ideal you for which to always strive towards. These are things that help us grow to a higher version of ourselves and it’s been jealously guarded by the religious for too long. We should all gladly secularize this and use it in our own daily meditations. Converse with ourself as we know ourself to be the most experienced expert in the topic of our self. Build your Socratic Daemon. Become the best you you can!