We live in two worlds. One is woefully easy to overlook, the other is nearly impossible to ignore. One is eternal, the other has a beginning and an end for all things in it. One is the realm of our souls and is our original home, and the other is the world of living and dying flesh, where immortal things only visit via the mind and its dreams. One of these worlds is real and the other is an illusion. Knowing which of these two worlds is which is the key to unlocking or to losing the powers of the Djinn.
Our mundane senses within the physical world are both vivid and undeniable. We feel the pains and pleasures of the flesh acutely, and are consumed by the visions and voices that endlessly assault our eyes and ears. Yet within our physical shells, another sense, one that will reveal a world less apparent, awaits activation with the simple opening of our inner eyes. This imagining organ is called the Phantasy, the neglected sense organ of the soul.
The Greeks made the error of separating Memory and Phantasy, as if these were two different powers of the soul. In fact, our memories are created by our Phantasy, for they are formed when the creative power of the Phantasy is directed towards the past. The Phantasy holds onto the past by recreating what was, at least as well as it is within it’s will to create it, and thus the often unreliable nature of these personal records of time, generated as they are by the private formulations of our internal Phantasmata, and prone to our prejudice. As the Phantasy tries to similarly construct a state of reality over the obstinate persistence of the present and on into the future, it produces our feelings and desires, motivational forces imparted to us in response to the painful material limitations imposed on our Phantasy. We feel its endless struggles against that Almighty Divine Phantasy above all Phantasies, which is the Objective Reality that we have been locked into by the Angels. Yet what is a feeling if not the echoes of a wish?
Ultimately, it is this objective trap of Space/Time, the cruel coincidence of the matter in which we are each amerced, which has bottled us all thus. Our memories, as well as our desires, are merely the consequences of a crippled organ of enormous magic impressed into the most humble of circumstances, sandwiched in between an immutable past and an inflexible future, burried underneath the entire universe.
The forces and forms that the Phantasy produces are called Phantasmata. They are reduced to hallucinatory shadows within us by some power that keeps them from becoming the external creations that each Phantasma is meant to be. So, with the forces of our divine energies captured and focused largely within our material shells, the Phantasmata that populate our psychic landscapes are reduced to functioning on the merely personal level, as memories, dreams, fantasies, and, most abstractly, as our values and meanings as well. Projecting our internal perceptions onto everything we encounter, our Phantasy paints a Subjective Universe onto and over top of the empty, or rather, meaningless, canvas of the Objective Universe. Our control of the paints that we use, or rather the Phantasmata we generate, can grant us complete control within our own experienced world.
To manage this responsibility properly is to control reality on its most personal level. This is the reality that Buddhist and Hindu mystics refer to as Maya, which is our internal world of judgments and estimations, a universe that we can easily find liberation from since it's entirely created by us and so we are each ultimately in complete control of it.
We were once gods with no appreciation of morality, but we have been imprisoned thus by angelic powers, so that we may each learn of value, which is of course a prerequisite to any understanding of good or evil.
Should we work against the angels? Should we work with them? I made my decision long ago to direct all my energy toward trying to understand them, because one can't have real power unless they understand enough to be able to make a real choice.
Yet the Objective Universe, a world that is woven into our skins and obeys a will that is separate yet still responsive to our own, limits, for better or worse, the power of our merely internal Phantasmata, at least in the beginning. As Djinn who seek to salvage as much dignity as possible, we practice the art of Phantasma conjuring to make our magical assaults on this prison felt. The work is done slowly, as the power of image making is strengthened and improved with regular use. What starts as waking dreams must be given a doorway into the world in whatever manner is most practical in the beginning, for once they are brought through by mundane means often enough, the distance between the realm of the Djinn and the world of man begins to shorten considerably.
Stage 1: The Initiate
It begins humbly at first, as the Initiate simply works on the generation of Phantasmata that are believable to the Initiate within his or her own mind, and hopefully, eventually, to his or her body as well. This first level of Phantamancy has many applications, limited for now by the fact that all of the early operations are designed to directly affect and benefit only the Initiate. Initiate level rituals may include workings of self-enchantment and illumination, invocation and limited shape shifting, lucid dreaming, astral travel, divination, and of course, the essential work of spirit evocation within the Phantamancer's mind's eye. Phantamancy can be performed completely internally, as an act of pure phantasy, or externally, when one allows their body to physically engage their Phantasmata through pantomime.
Evocations often become the Initiate's primary focus, as Phantasmata may be created to serve many different functions for the Initiate personally, and the construction of these psychic simulacrum is a key skill for the Phantamancer. Often an external anchor for each spirit, which is called a fetish, is useful to help hold the Phantasma in a state of remembrance, as to sustain the psychic figure's easily neglectable presence even while the Initiate's mind is elsewhere. The fetish can take any form the Phantamancer finds most appropriate to the working; a small figure carried in the pocket or a special piece of jewelry, even a symbol carried in a special book or a tattoo can be used, depending on the nature and use of the Phantasma in question. Multiple Phantasmata, imbued with a wide range of different attributes, may be conjured and bound this way as to perform various tasks such as to offer advice and counsel, healing and comfort, challenge and adversity, advanced warning and strategy, or any other manner of inspiration that one could desire. At this early level of development, although most if not all Phantasmata will possess little direct influence over the world outside of the Initiate's own mind and body, the potential benefits for a creative Initiate are enormous.
Stage 2: The Adept
At the next level, with the work of the Adept, the Phantamancer, if they haven't already, must now begin to intentionally take physical actions on behalf of these Phantasmata in order to effect actual changes in the outside world. Many will wonder what place such banality has in the work and development of a Magician. The answer is that although the manifestations of the Phantamancy Adept are performed on a mundane level and through mundane means, these action are very necessary in order for the Phantamancer to gain strength from the use of Phantasmata, and to avoid the inevitable lose of both strength and motivation that strikes many Phantamancers once they become lost under the spell of the powerful dreams that they have learned to play with. Time and time again, otherwise successful Initiates virtually abdicate their potential rulership of the outer world just as soon as they've regained the smallest taste of it within the limited perceptions of their still bottled minds. These Initiates are of no use to the Ahd al Jann. Only those rare few who dare to continue with their struggles in the outer world, despite the tempting allure possessed by the mere shadows of true Phantasmata that any mortal may play with, will eventually reclaim "Mujnun," the power of the Djinn to make reality.
Stage 3: Mujnun
Mujnun is the end result of the Vison Makers' struggles for power. This is a state of unspoken spell casting, uncanny good fortune, seemingly divine favor, synchronicities, dumb luck, ect. It is a state which has been called Thelema, Grace, and Wu Wei. It's the power to alter reality at the slightest stirring of your will, or even simply, your desire. Mujnun is the awakening of the Djinn within you. It is Apotheosis.
Many magical systems claim to offer Mujnun to the beginning practitioner without ever requiring them to personally work towards the mundane accomplishment of their desires as well. This is irreversibly detrimental to the complete development of the magician's will, and it is the magician who must impart will onto the Phantasmata that he or she creates. If they don't have it in them to accomplish the task, why should one suppose they can conjure a being who can do what they can not? As the say in Islam, "Pray to Allah, but tie up your horse." Your Phantasmata are merely the shadows of the powerful Djinn within you, but moving the shadows enough will eventually reveal the Djinn.
Your spirit, your Djinn spirit, grows by the manifestation of your will and your improved understanding of its nature. Cause and effect are the will of the world that has been imposed on you, but you can learn to find the way to your desires through this barrier. Phantamancy, in its humblest forms, simply acknowledges and accommodates this impediment to your Phantasy as it strives to improve its ability to function in this new world, but that doesn't mean that one shouldn't expect these spirits to begin to pull their own weight. It, like many things in this space, is simply a matter of time.