The way of the wizard
Writing for the Under The Juniper Tree blog, author “Gyro” comments on the death of magick:
I do not want to be performing sex rituals to summon demons á la Epstein, but I want to feel that not everything can be reduced to pure opportunity costs and ROI, that there is something beyond productivity and FOMO and anxiety-driven conduct patterns.
There is that “something” all around us, though we are not conditioned to notice it. The reason is that we get used to our quotidian routines, driven by the necessities of life. There is work and the preparation for work. Then there is the attendant competition for social standing, which improves the chances for work and for all its contributing factors. Thus arise feelings of ownership, jealousy, and so on. When we do not actively exchange goods, we trade in perceptions, and when those transactions break down we resort to violence to invigorate anew this cycle of work, goods, perceptions.
The cosmic continuum through pop culture hyperbole
From what I know, the magus is the high priest of Zoroastrian Iran, who was steeped in the study of the world as a continuum of science, mythology or art, and religiosity. Same principle for the Greek mystic, literally the one who goes through initiation (i.e. rigorous training of matters of deep knowledge (mysteries)) to become a hierophant (he who reveals that which is sacred). And same for the wizard, the wise person who is believed to possess supernatural powers owning to this same rare capacity of understanding the human condition and everything around it in a manner that is holistic.
I will be referring to this archetype as the “wizard”, though “magus” and “hierophant” are all interchangeable here. Note, further, that I am considering the one who is excellent, which excludes the average hierarch (“hierarchy” literally means the holy order/rule, so the “hierarch” is somebody who is high up on this order and, more generally, someone who holds a position of authority, hence the common use of “hierarchy”).
The pop culture view of the wizard is of a person, typically a man, who does things that are not available to normal folk. In many video games, for example, the wizard class has very little strength but can still dominate through the use of powerful spells. Give the wizard enough time and he will destroy an army of elite warriors. And even if the wizard is strong physically, their real strength is in their reality-altering mind.
This is all metaphor and hyperbole. Though it is rooted in fact. The wizard does indeed possess powers that the average person lacks. The wizard sees patterns that the average person has not even noticed and will find connections that are seemingly not there. But once the wizard explains those findings, they not only make sense, they are so obviously “there” that the average person will not even realise they are talking to a wizard: they think they are conversing with a normal fellow and so they will not even be aware that their reality has been changed by the wizard’s doing.
It is common to say that we are all under the influence of some long-dead intellectual. This too points to the same direction of how mind alters reality. Once you learn something, you see things accordingly. And so when the wizard “casts the spell”, which is a metaphor for saying that the wizard has made you aware of something, your world is no longer the same it was before.
When Kong Zi (Confucius), a sage in his own right, talked about Lao Zi, such was his impression of the man that he thought he had witnessed a dragon, i.e. a mythical creature. Lao Zi was a human like everybody else, yet his capacity to think things through was so extraordinary that he was, in a manner of speaking, superhuman: he was nothing like what you see every day.
So we take both the exaggeration as well as the underlying fact it is trying to highlight.
The global context
The wizard understands multiplicity on the continuum of oneness. This already sounds like gibberish. How can “multiplicity” also be “oneness”? If it is many, then it cannot possibly be one, right? The answer is that there always are many and one: all the particulars have something in common, like all the dogs you have met share the common nature of dog as such. Both dogs and dog are present. Where others can name only discreet presences, the wizard discerns the common in the multitude, going from the most concrete to the most abstract.
Why does this matter though and how does that make someone a “wizard” in the pop culture sense? It matters because it changes the frame of reference for any given thought. The wizard knows that how we frame things conditions what we discover in them: it foreshadows what is to come. Furthermore, the wizard understands that connections between otherwise disparate fields of endeavour become apparent once we couch them in terms of a context that encompasses all of them.
The wizard’s context is the global context, so the possibility of finding connections extends far beyond anything the average person can comprehend in their current state. To the wizard’s mind, this does not create any confusion whatsoever, as the wizard can tell how presences are at once different and the same. It is a matter of what needs to be emphasised, which the wizard is well aware of.
[ Also read: On the absolute other (2026-08-02). ]
Situational awareness
In practice, stupid people are not those who lack intelligence, but those who do not have structure in their life. They disperse their energy and end up running around like headless chickens, always stressed, always unprepared, always a few steps behind. Incredibly smart people can be stupid in this regard.
Having structure is beneficial to everyone. This consists of routines, hobbies, responsibilities. Basically, the arrangements that reduce or eliminate indecision: we do whatever we are supposed to do without thinking about it and getting distracted in the process.
Both the average person and the wizard benefit from having structure in their life. There is, however, one important detail that distinguishes the two. The average person faithfully applies the rules without thinking about the particularities of the case: “this is what the rule says, so this is what I do” is their approach.
Whereas the wizard is mindful and thus in tune with the particularities of the case. If there is a need to introduce an exception, the wizard will notice it and suspend the application of the rules. Not because the rules are not useful in general, but because committing to them independent of the specifics can lead to adverse results.
We may simply state that it is smart to have structure but it is stupid to apply it without judgement. Such judicious thinking is possible thanks to the appreciation of context in general.
The art of control
The wizard’s power consists in knowing when to suspend the rules. There is no one-size-fits-all kind of answer here, no specific formula that we can rely on independent of what is happening. It always depends. The wizard, then, knows when to make an exception, in what will seem like a completely arbitrary decision to the untrained person. This is because their context does not factor in all the considerations that the wizard has accounted for.
Since I mentioned rules, allow me another example, though the point is general. In the law, the wizard recognises spirit. Not as a figure of speech, but as an inherent reality: that which is present even as the circumstances change, else that which transcends the constitution of the case. Phrasing it this way shows why “spirit” is the correct term. By extension, there is “spirit” in everything.
As such, the wizard is able to find the truth through the specifics yet beyond the specifics. It is truth in interpretation, else in situational awareness. It cannot be limited to the letter of the statement as such or the given phenomenon in isolation. Again, context.
Because of this bigger picture view of the world, the wizard remains in control of the situation and is accordingly calm. Theirs is an awareness of the structure by which phenomena unfold.
The wizard is confident in their capacity to operate in the world. Like the physicist who does not need to continuously observe each specific object to know how a given action will produce motion through reactions given initial conditions, the wizard skips past the details to anticipate that which has not been made manifest and to fathom what may be.
The wizard has thus experienced far more than what their age or specifics of daily life would otherwise permit. This is not knowledge that is measured in quantity, as in how many books one can quote. It is mastery of conduct. When, for example, we witness an elite musician play music, we know that there is depth there but we also understand that to us non-elite-musicians the exact depth is unknown: it simply gets dark after a certain point.
The shifting sands do not bewilder the one who is in tune with shifting as such. Put differently, the wizard is not distracted and will not go down paths that lead to undesired destinations.
Notice, again, how all this makes the pop culture view of the wizard more realistic than it would otherwise seem.
Summoning daemons
Which brings me to the quote I have above from the Under The Juniper Tree blog. Gods, daemons, spirits, or whatever you want to name them, do not answer calls. They do not hang out there waiting for us to show appreciation for them.
You know by now that the many and the one are not in contradiction, so “gods” and “god” are interchangeable.
God is immanent: here, there, everywhere. When you perform a ritual, supposedly to summon a god/daemon/spirit, you actually do it to focus on a task. You force yourself to slow down. In the process, you begin to get out of the tunnel you otherwise are in. The tunnel effect occurs naturally as you speed up: the pace of your life forces you to perceive only a tiny part of totality and, furthermore, makes you not appreciate how close you are to what you think is far away.
[ Also read: On the importance of rituals (2026-07-27). ]
The summoning that happens at a ritual is about your concentration. By slowing down and focusing, you begin to practice the skill of calling upon your own powers, collecting all that energy and channelling it in a focused way. God, then, is revealed to you not because god moved to where you are: you effectively put on your glasses to read the text that is in front of you.
Epstein and friends (calling it “Epstein+” here for brevity) were/are not summoning evil daemons in what is some one-off event at a specific altar: they have already focused their energy in such a way that their entire life has qualities that we can simply describe as “satanic”. When Epstein+ is trafficking people, he is already satanic, when Epstein+ is throwing everybody under the bus for profit he is satanic throughout, and so on.
The story is the same for what we typically think of hell, of the self-inflicted pain of Sisyphus, the tormenting greed of Tantalus, the lack of judgement of Procrustes, et cetera. The “afterlife” is a useful metaphor, though we have to understand its actual application: it refers to the life that occurs here-and-now as well as the life that happens right after any give act, else the consequences of one’s actions.
If, for example, someone is gambling, the “afterlife” is the new normal when they are finally broke, have committed domestic violence, and so on. It is the inescapable reality of the broken relationships and of the insatiable passion that eats away not only at the family fortune but also the lives of those involved. Extend this principle to all sins and you immediately realise how it is all about this life, not what happens after you die in some other dimension.
And the same for “summoning” the benign spirits, what the Greeks call “eudaemonia”, literally “good-spirit-ness”, which is clumsily translated as “happiness”. You are not actually summoning anything from another reality: you are channelling your energy in such a way that your life acquires certain qualities. And if you are consistent, then those qualities underpin your new normal. Think again about how I used “spirit” above. It is the same here: how you live has a “spirit” beyond the day-to-day details, so we can metaphorically speak of a good daemon that is taking care of you or has become you.
This is also why the concept of the exalted human makes sense. Whether we call this “apotheosis” (reaching towards godhood), “theanthopos” (god-man), “prophet”, or “dragon”, as I mentioned earlier, is not essential to my point here: what they have is rare and, of course, there are levels to it.
Immanent pattern
In conclusion, as you slow down, you begin to realise that there is pattern throughout and that all presences are the same qua patterns. This we know even from basic observations. Black and white are opposites, in a manner of thinking. Yet they also are the same once understood as points on the spectrum of tonality. The wizard works with colours and colour as such. Me and you, we are different if we account for all the variables that describe a person, but we are also the same once we think that a human is equal to another human.
It is thus that we are inspired to observe the world all around us. Everywhere we look, we trace pattern and we realise that there cannot be anything beside pattern as such. It is pattern of pattern of pattern. Whatever then we understand as distinct from the totality of known patterns is a manner of thinking about pattern as such (and thinking is also pattern): it is thought of as distinct in the same way it can be thought of in relation to another pattern.
The wizard comprehends this insight and embeds it as daily practice. If even the multiplicity of the multitude is subject to how we think, then we can think differently for everything. What superficially is the same case becomes a different case altogether once perceived from a new perspective. There is no case without scope, without the perspective that factors in certain things while leaving out others. What remains, then, is the power of reconstitution: thinking anew, else pattern reconfigured into pattern where configuration is itself pattern.
This is all sounding like pop culture magic, right? It is, though we have to distinguish these natural abilities, which are practical throughout, from poetic effect.
[ Also read: Beyond the temple (2026-07-27). ]
The wizard will not teleport to places, for example: this is a metaphor for saying that the wizard has understood things the way someone does once they live long enough in a certain place.
The wizard does not produce fireballs out of thin air: this, too, is a metaphor for the aforementioned reconfiguration, where we take something out there and turn it into something else in what is an exercise of empowerment.
And so, the wizard does not talk to god in the literal sense but only as a metaphor for describing how the wizard identifies spirit and then the spirit among the spirits and how, thus, the wizard employs those insight in pursuit of something practical.
There will always be pretenders. Those who claim to know more than they do, those who, in other words, will promise you fabulous stuff. And you will either believe everyone and suffer the consequences or you will not believe any of them, which means that you will live without the “magic” I covered herein (and, again, there are levels to it).
Perhaps, then, the safest option is become a wizard yourself.