I think that Bardon and others suggest that you can make all sorts of energy forms that are made up of different magical intentions. How does this work? what exactly is intention? do we have to really intensely want something in order to intend it? what do we do when we intend something in magical procedures?
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What exactly is 'intention' and how does it link with different kinds of energy?
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The intensity of wanting can sometimes feed the strength of an intention, but other times can be a distraction from it. Strength of intention is better compared to a laser-like commitment to accomplishing some particular aim. I'm not particularly a fan of chaos magic, but I think the process of sigil creation does teach something helpful about magical application of intention. Get a good guide on sigil creation (there are a gajillion of them out there), practice that for a while, then you will understand intuitively how to apply the principle of intention to any other kind of magical enterprise.
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This.
In his later books, debunked NewAge guru Carlos Castaneda made a big deal of word term 'intent'. I copypasta'd Google Gemini's answer here because his books became more and more abstruse over the years, and you really need some AI help to understand them at all - I don't know how his fans managed without it, I myself certainly didn't:
In the shamanic philosophy of Carlos Castaneda, "Intent" is an all-pervading, immeasurable, and indescribable cosmic force that is responsible for creating, sustaining, and transforming everything in the universe. Humans do not create intent; rather, they align with it. "Unbending intent" is the rigorous, fierce state of purpose and discipline a warrior develops to clean their rusty connection to this universal force and command it to alter perception or reality.
I think Castaneda was also an influence on Peter J. Carroll when he formulated his chaos sigil magic theory (you could probably also substitute 'intention' by 'will' here, same difference). In "Liber Null & Psychonaut" he writes about his own evocation methods:
[…] the will and perception are focused as intently as possible (by some gnostic method) on the elemental’s sigils or characteristics so that these take on a portion of the magician’s life force and begin autonomous existence. In the case of pre-existing beings, this operation serves to bind the entity to the magician’s will.
This intent focus is probably why he stressed the importance of empty-mind meditation so much - if you're able to gaze at a sigil for ten minutes straight or longer while exerting your will as a grim impersonal force devoid of any faltering or doubt, I think you've got it. The 'impersonal' part is crucial. It's not YOU specifically doing something, it's the momentum of the universe that will accomplish things. It's hard to do though, which explains the popularity of the, ahem, 'lightning method' for charging sigils where you only have to focus your attention for a few seconds.
At least that's what Bardon meant who was also big on one-pointed concentration in his IIH. It's mind magic, and apart from rock-solid concentration, you'll possible need good visualisation skills as well if you want to create entities, if that's what you mean. Haven't tried it myself though.
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IMO, intention is the deep-seated desire that you program into your subconscious. Synchronicity is what you get when you are in the correct mindset for magic, but have not specified an intent - you get whatever was buzzing around in there at the time. Yeah, sure, the unlikely event of your taxicab number matching up with your credit card number - but so what?
'Alignment' is a good word - you are trying to align yourself with the future version of yourself where your intent is fulfilled; you are literally trying to program yourself to be that person.
I have come to realise (so to speak) that the 'lightning method' works for short term intents, but to succeed long term in magic, you need to learn some form of empty-mind meditation - even if it's just the ability to banish the odd thought at will.
'Alignment' is a good word - you are trying to align yourself with the future version of yourself where your intent is fulfilled; you are literally trying to program yourself to be that person.
I have come to realise (so to speak) that the 'lightning method' works for short term intents, but to succeed long term in magic, you need to learn some form of empty-mind meditation - even if it's just the ability to banish the odd thought at will.
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The process normally goes like this:
1) Devise intent
2) Create an external representation of this intent
3) Program the external representation into your subconscious
4) Forget about it
5) Don't tell anyone about it until it completes
Step 3 is normally done as quickly as possible, but this is only really useful if your intent is a simple one. For more long term results, you need to do the programming through meditation of some kind, perhaps in the same way that repeating a mantra long enough destroys any meaning it had.
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This is basically the template for Chaos Magic. "Advanced Magic for Beginners" by Alan Chapman is in the Library and tells you about this stuff pretty clearly. As for using meditation, I'm not sure what the best reference would be. Maybe some more experienced forum members could make suggestions?
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Carroll I've already mentioned, additionally by Frater U.D. or just about every book on chaos magic.
A chaos magic sigil is one you create yourself as an abstract expression of what you wish to obtain or occur, or of your will or intention if that's the context for you - more about it in these books. The idea is to bypass one's conscious focus on the desired outcome by 'encrypting' it in the form of a pictorial representation so that you're no longer reminded of what you want specifically. The sigil is then 'charged', i.e. fired off, let loose on the universe. It's like ordering something online - you fill out a form, press Send, and an entire complex process is set in motion at the other end which doesn't require your active involvement anymore.
Charging is done in a state of what he calls 'gnosis' which is an altered state of consciousness. Carroll distinguishes between the Inhibitory Mode (trance, concentration, fasting, etc.) and the Excitatory Mode (sexual arousal, dancing, drugs, etc.), and chaotes have come up with numerous other methods since. What's interesting is that he also lists "Gazing" and "Right way of walking", two Castaneda techniques. 'Gazing' is basically object contration in Buddhist meditation where you focus on the breath, for example, or any physical or visualised item.
When using an inhibitory method like gazing/object concentration, the difficulty lies in keeping your mind a complete blank for an extended period of time while staring at your sigil. For some people it's quite easy - they'll get so lost in the geometric patterns that they'll forget everything around them and fall into a state of trance. Most of us, however, will find that their minds starts wandering and will engage what Castaneda calls the 'inner dialogue', a running commentary underneath your sensory impressions, musings, thinking about the future or the past, what that co-worker said to you, that you should really call your mother, etc. Worst of all would be thinking the desired outcome of your operation ("I wonder if it'll work?" or something like that), that's supposed to ruin the whole process according to the original theory, although I have my reservations about that.
By training your mind first as recommended by Bardon, Castaneda, and Carroll, you'll be able to avoid this mind-wandering and keep out any intrusive thoughts effortlessly. You can probably easily imagine what happens once you force yourself not to think about something… you'll think about it all the time. Experience with empty-mind meditation will help immensely since you learn how to switch off your brain at will but it'll require dedicated daily practice to get any good at it. Trance is probably easier: the idea is becoming so engrossed in your sigil that your conscious thinking will stop all by itself. For these purposes, meditation and trance are not so different and largely a matter of definition.
I'm grateful to @Robert Ramsay for pointing out that that success in achieving short-term vs. long-term goals may be dependent of the type of gnosis employed. Scatterbrained as I am, I've never tried any inhibitory methods before but have noticed that chaos sigil magic is only ever good for achieving specific one-time results but unsuitable for drawn-out processes or effecting long-term changes, and Robert's idea may make the crucial difference. By the way, Damon Brand has this sigil gazing method where he recommends letting one's eyes wander around it counter-clockwise (I always draw circles around my sigils anyway, makes it easier to focus awareness), tracing all the lines one after the other, discerning different shapes within the sigil, perhaps imagening shadows… worth a try.
A chaos magic sigil is one you create yourself as an abstract expression of what you wish to obtain or occur, or of your will or intention if that's the context for you - more about it in these books. The idea is to bypass one's conscious focus on the desired outcome by 'encrypting' it in the form of a pictorial representation so that you're no longer reminded of what you want specifically. The sigil is then 'charged', i.e. fired off, let loose on the universe. It's like ordering something online - you fill out a form, press Send, and an entire complex process is set in motion at the other end which doesn't require your active involvement anymore.
Charging is done in a state of what he calls 'gnosis' which is an altered state of consciousness. Carroll distinguishes between the Inhibitory Mode (trance, concentration, fasting, etc.) and the Excitatory Mode (sexual arousal, dancing, drugs, etc.), and chaotes have come up with numerous other methods since. What's interesting is that he also lists "Gazing" and "Right way of walking", two Castaneda techniques. 'Gazing' is basically object contration in Buddhist meditation where you focus on the breath, for example, or any physical or visualised item.
When using an inhibitory method like gazing/object concentration, the difficulty lies in keeping your mind a complete blank for an extended period of time while staring at your sigil. For some people it's quite easy - they'll get so lost in the geometric patterns that they'll forget everything around them and fall into a state of trance. Most of us, however, will find that their minds starts wandering and will engage what Castaneda calls the 'inner dialogue', a running commentary underneath your sensory impressions, musings, thinking about the future or the past, what that co-worker said to you, that you should really call your mother, etc. Worst of all would be thinking the desired outcome of your operation ("I wonder if it'll work?" or something like that), that's supposed to ruin the whole process according to the original theory, although I have my reservations about that.
By training your mind first as recommended by Bardon, Castaneda, and Carroll, you'll be able to avoid this mind-wandering and keep out any intrusive thoughts effortlessly. You can probably easily imagine what happens once you force yourself not to think about something… you'll think about it all the time. Experience with empty-mind meditation will help immensely since you learn how to switch off your brain at will but it'll require dedicated daily practice to get any good at it. Trance is probably easier: the idea is becoming so engrossed in your sigil that your conscious thinking will stop all by itself. For these purposes, meditation and trance are not so different and largely a matter of definition.
I'm grateful to @Robert Ramsay for pointing out that that success in achieving short-term vs. long-term goals may be dependent of the type of gnosis employed. Scatterbrained as I am, I've never tried any inhibitory methods before but have noticed that chaos sigil magic is only ever good for achieving specific one-time results but unsuitable for drawn-out processes or effecting long-term changes, and Robert's idea may make the crucial difference. By the way, Damon Brand has this sigil gazing method where he recommends letting one's eyes wander around it counter-clockwise (I always draw circles around my sigils anyway, makes it easier to focus awareness), tracing all the lines one after the other, discerning different shapes within the sigil, perhaps imagening shadows… worth a try.
@Lion Lots of good information has been given on intention, but I would also like to expand a bit on Bardon's definition of intention. You will not see him define it specifically in Initiation into Hermetics, but in the Czech Hermetics translation of "An Aide to Introspection", there is a brief foreword that is written by Bardon. This foreword contains some crucial hints on how he defines intention and I think it will be quite helpful for you to consider these as keys to understanding what "intention" could be.
His hints are basically regarding the different ways to "impregnate" the air, food, or water with "wishes" in order to help with your elemental soul equilibrium practices. The different types of impregnations he mentions are:
1. Intellectual impregnation - This involves either "speaking" your wish into the medium and letting the substance absorb your words. This is almost considered a physical level impregnation whereby you are infusing the intellectual meaning of the wish into the substance's akasha.
2. Emotional impregnation - This involves projecting the emotions associated with the wish into your substance and is an astral level infusion to the substance's Akasha. Every wish you have also has emotions associated with it. For example, if you are wishing for tranquility, then you would infuse the emotion of calmness into the substance.
3. Visionary impregnation - This involves using the imagination in order to conjure a visual representation of the wish and could probably be considered a mental level impregnation. Again if you are wishing for tranquility or to be a tranquil individual, then you would imagine a picture of yourself as an extremely calm individual. This could be you meditating in a calm environment, etc.
The key to understanding intention is to understand that these 3 impregnations are all components of intention. I think Franz Bardon associates the "wish" with "intention". So you need to ask yourself again, what is "intention"? It could be a wish, a direction, and a will towards something, such as a goal.
But what does it look like, practically? For some people, intention is a feeling / emotion combined with a visualisation of what they want. For some others, it is an intellectual understanding of what they want combined with emotions for that want. In many cases, an intention is all 3 things:
1. An intellectual understanding of what is wanted.
2. The intense feelings for that "want" or "goal"
3. A visual (or sensory) representation of what that goal looks like, which is likely closely related to the intellectual understanding.
With all 3 of these components, Bardon mentions that the strongest impregnation of the wish can be achieved into the substance and this will lead to the strongest level of manifestation across the different levels of existence (i.e. mental, physical, astral). And this also likely is what he considers the key for "intention" in magic. So I guess you could say intention is all 3 components of a will being applied in some direction.
In ceremonial magick, I feel this definition of intention is a very practical one to use. If you are evoking a spirit and you wish to allow the spirit to understand what you wish for, you may use a combination of speaking your wish (i.e. intellectualising it to the spirit), feeling the emotional strength of your wish, and mentally visualising the wish / result to the spirit. This will transmit a very clear picture to the spirit of what you are asking for. If you are using ceremonial magick to consecrate a talisman, then infusing the wish into the talisman in the same way as you would with the food / drink / air impregnations would probably be a logical choice.
You could apply this knowledge across different traditions beyond ceremonial magick of course. Many of the chaos magick definitions here would also fit quite well with this framework of course. But I feel like this definition from Bardon is the easiest to understand and actually addresses, component-wise, what exactly intention is.
His hints are basically regarding the different ways to "impregnate" the air, food, or water with "wishes" in order to help with your elemental soul equilibrium practices. The different types of impregnations he mentions are:
1. Intellectual impregnation - This involves either "speaking" your wish into the medium and letting the substance absorb your words. This is almost considered a physical level impregnation whereby you are infusing the intellectual meaning of the wish into the substance's akasha.
2. Emotional impregnation - This involves projecting the emotions associated with the wish into your substance and is an astral level infusion to the substance's Akasha. Every wish you have also has emotions associated with it. For example, if you are wishing for tranquility, then you would infuse the emotion of calmness into the substance.
3. Visionary impregnation - This involves using the imagination in order to conjure a visual representation of the wish and could probably be considered a mental level impregnation. Again if you are wishing for tranquility or to be a tranquil individual, then you would imagine a picture of yourself as an extremely calm individual. This could be you meditating in a calm environment, etc.
The key to understanding intention is to understand that these 3 impregnations are all components of intention. I think Franz Bardon associates the "wish" with "intention". So you need to ask yourself again, what is "intention"? It could be a wish, a direction, and a will towards something, such as a goal.
But what does it look like, practically? For some people, intention is a feeling / emotion combined with a visualisation of what they want. For some others, it is an intellectual understanding of what they want combined with emotions for that want. In many cases, an intention is all 3 things:
1. An intellectual understanding of what is wanted.
2. The intense feelings for that "want" or "goal"
3. A visual (or sensory) representation of what that goal looks like, which is likely closely related to the intellectual understanding.
With all 3 of these components, Bardon mentions that the strongest impregnation of the wish can be achieved into the substance and this will lead to the strongest level of manifestation across the different levels of existence (i.e. mental, physical, astral). And this also likely is what he considers the key for "intention" in magic. So I guess you could say intention is all 3 components of a will being applied in some direction.
In ceremonial magick, I feel this definition of intention is a very practical one to use. If you are evoking a spirit and you wish to allow the spirit to understand what you wish for, you may use a combination of speaking your wish (i.e. intellectualising it to the spirit), feeling the emotional strength of your wish, and mentally visualising the wish / result to the spirit. This will transmit a very clear picture to the spirit of what you are asking for. If you are using ceremonial magick to consecrate a talisman, then infusing the wish into the talisman in the same way as you would with the food / drink / air impregnations would probably be a logical choice.
You could apply this knowledge across different traditions beyond ceremonial magick of course. Many of the chaos magick definitions here would also fit quite well with this framework of course. But I feel like this definition from Bardon is the easiest to understand and actually addresses, component-wise, what exactly intention is.