From: amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Visualization
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 12:22:51 -0500

In article <2vqrbs$h1o@nic.scruz.net>, shades@millcomm.com (Jetblack) writes:
> In the books I have read so far on getting started in the magickal
> arts, I have always seen the need near the very beginning to have
> very skilled "Creative Visualization" skills. [...]  I really need
> help in this area.

This is something that some people find quite hard, others second
nature, and most people something in between.  If you don't already
have visualization skills, the only real way to acquire them is
practice.  However, there are a great number of different ways to do
so--everything from buying a book on it to taking a drawing class.  My
own opinion is that artistic experience is the best, but that may be
just because I was up to my ears in art as a kid, and still pursue
many arts and crafts as hobbies.  Another apporach is to take up
reading of extremely engaging fiction, so that you get so absorbed
that you forget you are reading and actually "see and hear" the action
in your mind's eye.  This is basically the same process as magical
visualization, only it's externally directed instead of interally
directed.

As far as books and references go, the only two with explicitly
magical themes that I'd recommend off the top of my head are:

	Knight, Gareth, _Experience_of_the_Inner_Worlds_
	Ashcroft-Nowicki, Dolores, _Highways_of_the_Mind_

I don't have any more information handy, although I know that they are
both currently in print in the USA, I believe by Aquarian Press.

Peace,
Amanda Walker