Magic Is Light
The Daily Magic of Aligning with Destiny
Magic is light. Light is magic.
I don’t mean that metaphorically.
Two decades ago, I attended Earth Activist Training with Starhawk in the Sonoma County hills. One morning, gathered in circle with our group of tender-hearted, fired up permaculture-activist-witches, I heard her say something that’s stayed with me ever since, “Magic is the art of changing consciousness at will.”
Twenty years ago, I was still in the cocoon, just beginning to carry out my soul’s wishes. Going to Earth Activist Training was one of those wishes. Moving to Block Island after college (7 by 5 miles, thirteen miles out to sea, with nothing open in winter but the post office, a bar, and thank you, thank you, the library), and basically dropping out of modern society was another.
Back then I thought magic required special powers. I loved the romance of it, but it seemed far beyond my abilities. Hearing Starhawk define it so simply really struck me that morning. Changing my consciousness at will was something I could do. Anyone could. It would require work, but was within the realm of possibility. Humans were given free will, right? I resolved to use mine to transform my consciousness, because honestly, I was very depressed. Since adolescence, I had experienced the kind of depression that scared myself when I wasn’t too numb to feel, and definitely others who knew me well. Mostly I was able to mask it, but the disguise always eventually collapsed, and there I was again feeling like a failure and that I’d disappointed everyone who cared about me.
But it wasn’t like I suddenly had a magic wand in hand and my life transformed over night. In fact, it took years of grueling work to transform my consciousness at will. It was much harder than college, or working on the oyster farm in winter, or making 250 sandwiches in 2.5 hours with a line out the door of my friend’s deli. (All things I did to get by in my very long cocoon.)
There are so many layers to this journey, I don’t want to take the time to go into all the details, but if you’re interested, you can read that story in my mythopoetic memoir, Piko: A Return to the Dreaming. What I will say, is eventually, I became the wand. Now I can wave one for fun if I want, but I don’t need it.
Let’s fast forward about twenty years from that Sonoma morning in circle with Starhawk to two years ago, where I learned an actual technology of ancient magic from Ke’oni Hanalei of Pōhala Hawaiian Botanicals.
Brother Ke’oni is a descendant of the Mū Hawaiians. I have written about my relationship with him and the teachings of his lineage in many articles here on Substack, so if you’re interested, peruse the archives, and definitely click on that link above and dive into his website.
The Mū identified nine principles of the oscillation of magic. These principles, known as the Paiwa Heka, correspond to the seven principles of light recognized by contemporary science. With two missing, we just aren’t spinning right, which means our collective consciousness, and all we create, is unable to align with the full potential of the cosmos.
It’s up to us as individuals to remedy that. That’s how consensus changes, right?
Here is a list of the nine principles. I highlighted the two that are missing, which as you can see are the first and the last, the alpha and the omega. As of today, birth and death are mysteries that many fear, especially death. I’m not one for solving mysteries, at least not cosmic ones, but what would our world look like if we let go of the fear of beginnings and endings?
These are the kind of trails that lead me down paths that become essays that meander like super-continental rivers, so I’m going to rein myself in and satiate the linear by first listing the nine principles, and Brother Keoni’s translation of how they play out in the human realm, highlighting the first and last, the two omitted by science. Here you go.
The Paiwa Heka
Revelation: Disclosures
Reflection: Exposures
Refraction: Organizing by way of linear (speed/direction)
Diffraction: Flexibility and tolerance (the phenomenal)
Interference (amplification and voltage)
Polarization (condensing of extremes/assembly/the holistic realm)
Dispersion (clarity of intention/realm of spellcasting)
Scattering (contribution and spectrum/realm of fractals and replication)
Completions (circumnavigation/realm of the convergence)
Since Brother Ke’oni shared the nine oscillations with me two years ago, the Paiwa Heka has become the conscious foundational structure of my life. Of course, light was already structuring it, because as of today, Earth is still rotating on her axis and spinning around the sun.
What I came to realize through developing a conscious relationship with light, is that through its physical properties (the Paiwa Heka), light itself is an initiatory path. That path is documented in my greatest loves and deepest fascination since childhood—folk tales and myths. Since this revelation, I’ve been developing ways to work with the properties of light to reinvigorate human consciousness through conscious engagement with light as a path of inquiry
Light is magic.
I wrote a long series here on The Corpus Callosum Chronicles on each one of the properties. If you care to dive into the archives look for the posts labelled “The Art of Spellcasting.”
I have also developed a process of inquiry structured on the nine oscillations I call the Nine Currents that we navigate in The Coracle in order to understand where and how we are in relationship with the stories that are summoning us into soul embodiment on that mentorship journey. I haven’t mentioned it much yet, but I also offer one-time sessions where we dialogue with the Nine Currents, so if you’re interested in working with me, please navigate to this website page for the details: Individual sessions with Jen.
I have also developed a way to refine your writing—poems, stories, novels, essays, by sifting your work through the Nine Currents like a miner panning for gold. I want to list that process here, but I’m going to hold off for another post in order to keep this all digestible. I will say, if you’re a writer looking for assistance in expanding your work in all directions. I offer individual sessions as a “light coach,” which doesn’t mean we won’t go into your darkness, because that’s where those missing parts are that need to be uncovered in order to become the full-spectrum humans we are meant to become. I will finish this essay with a poem I wrote that includes all nine properties. I wrote it before I knew what they were, which makes it all the more magic to me. The circumstances that led to it were so powerful, they extracted the truth of my own wholeness from me and I showed up for it. I got it onto the page and I have never been the same since.
I’ve been intending to host an online writing and discussion group here for paid subscribers on the Paiwa Heka, an exploration of one principle per month. I do still want to do this, but I have to be honest, I don’t have the space for more Zoom calls, so I am going to hold space for one principle beginning first week of March with Revelation, for nine months. Those posts will be for all subscribers, and paid subscribers will have access to a private chat where we can share our thoughts and creations.
Over the next few posts, I’m going to share details on ways I’ve been cultivating a practice on how to become a conscious light magician.
Before I share that poem I promised, I am excited to tell you that Brother Ke’oni is offering a 4-part virtual series on the Paiwa Heka in April. I am incredibly honored to be a guest speaker on the principle of Reflection/Exposure. You can register for this life-changing offering here:
The Hala-The 9 Properties of Light, The 9 Octopus Brains
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for my next post on how to apply the Nine Principles to your own creative works.
If you want to engage directly with me and fellow readers of The Corpus Callosum Chronicles, please join my chat by clicking on the link below.
And how here’s that poem I promised. It’s an example of all things converging, of inner circumstances aligning with outer. I often wondered why I was working on that oyster farm (aside from needing money to survive). After writing this poem, I knew why. I also knew destiny wasn’t something outside of me. It was rising to the occasion of one’s own greatness in order to give a gift back to life.
That Which There Are No Words For —in memoriam, Sandy Hook, December 14, 2012 All afternoon on the oyster farm a great egret watched me work hoisting bags of oysters out of the shallow water onto the dock to sort. It was dark of the moon, tide lower than I’d ever seen it, exposing rocks, a pile of culch I’d dumped at the edge of the marsh, mud speckled with dead slipper shells, crabs that could be hibernating. Oysters, sealed tight, holding their mouthful of saltwater in deep cups polished smooth inside by flesh, passed through my gloved fingers, sorting for market. I wasn’t thinking about thresholds, how often we cross without knowing, doors opening and closing without a creak or click as the latch catches and we wonder what side we are on now. My body had taken over: bend, hoist, dump, sort, back into the old bag to grow another winter underwater, or into a wider mesh strung on a line close to shore for market. I broke apart the fused ones, pulled the beards off mussels and tossed them overboard, rescued small crabs who clung or froze, imagining then I couldn’t see them. Minnows thrashed in my palms, a surge of pure light and muscle. When I released them back to the muddy water through my cold fingers joy flashed like quicksilver. I wasn’t thinking about thresholds, I was on my hands and knees pushing oyster bags through six inches of water, sucked down when I tried to stand, forced to crawl, cursing and laughing. The egret, who had not moved in hours, took a few elegant steps, rippling the calm. Sitting up, kneeling in my waders, waist-deep in mud, I closed my eyes, not because I knew what was coming, but to see in the dark as well. The white feathers of the egret so fine and smooth. The marsh, golden in mid-December. It was the day before our darkness made itself known, that which we’d say about after, There are no words for. Crow call in the east answered by one at my back, Prepare to be emptied. The death of innocence is one way to learn how to love. In the dark, I pray for another, pure as white feathers, a breath passing with ease through my body, turned to the low sun moving across the marsh.
©Jennifer Lighty, first published in The Beloit Poetry Journal, Vol. 63, No. 4.
Kō aloha lā ea
Concentrate on love by way of the light