The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.
—Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars

This is the strong force of all forces, overcoming every subtle and penetrating every solid thing.
—Hermes Trismegistus, The Emerald Tablet (Tabula Smaragdina)

During my MMM, I had a few moments wherewhen, having experienced some difficulty meditating or otherwise concentrating on this, that, or neither, my inner dialog would return a familiar reprimand from my childhood: "Control, control; you must learn control!" Yep: Master Yoda. Certainly, Lucas' Jedi mythos is rife with common themes and archetypes, many of them recognized in the occult. So I thought, if Lucas' mythos is based more or less on "real" magic, then why not use it as a system of real magic in lieu of, say, a Hermetic system, or Hoodoo, or whatever? This document is my first attempt at doing just that.

I have not gone much into the colorful details of the Jedi mythos—the people, places, events, and such—but rather kept to the mechanics of the Force as a model of magic. I hope you find it useful, thoughtful, or at least mildly amusing.

And may the—well, you know.

Frater Elvex
July 2006

Magic may be understood as making something happen by supernatural means; a violation of natural cause-and-effect. Why supernatural? Because by their (un)nature, magical acts elude scientific explanation. If science can explain something, then it becomes simply natural as it is absorbed into the set of "known" causes-and-effects along with acceleration, gravity, et cetera (which belong, it might be etymologically worth noting, to physics). Perhaps some day everything we presently call magic will be divided between understood phenomena and misunderstood observations, or perhaps there will continue a third option, some way of "effecting" change beyond so-called natural causes. In any case...

Many attempts have been made to describe and explain magic in terms of spiritual medium, psychic energy, subtle bodies, astral light, et cetera. There may actually exist some magical analog to physical energy, or it may just be metaphor for something we cannot otherwise explain (for the reasons just given). (It is this author's suspicion that magic has more to do with information than energy, but insofar as energy and in-formation form a continuum, it is difficult to discuss one without calling or at least implying the other.) In any case, to talk about it at all, we have to name it...

A force is simply a cause of change, and change is simply the difference between two states. If something still then moves, it does so because a force was exerted on it. If something moving changes course, some force is "behind" the change in direction. This is all well understood, documented, and demonstrable under the "laws" of physical science, and is the very stuff of cause-and-effect. The idea of a Force-with-a-capital-F is essentially a religious one (more about that, later), but in terms of practical magic, we may employ it as a label for that which causes effects beyond the known forces of acceleration, gravity, et cetera¹. Id est, magic.

But more than calling a rose by some other name, we can look to the expression of the Force within the Star Wars psychospace as a model of practical, empty-handed (except for the occasional lightsaber) magic. But before we do that...

The (in)famous adept, Aleister Crowley, defined magic (spelled with a 'k' at its end, to distinguish it from performance magic) as "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in Conformity with Will."² So what is will, and what does it have to do with force which as we have defined it, is the agent of change?

Water moves "down"³ because it is absolutely subject to forces beyond its control. Indeed, except for moments of pathetic fallacy, we never blame water for misbehaving, because we recognize that it does not behave at all; it only ever re-"acts" to how it is pushed and pulled this way and that by forces.

By contrast, a salmon that struggles upstream in order to spawn displays some kind of will-power. It has some desire, some purpose, somewhere to be, some job to do. It acts against the forces in its environment, and has developed some degree of control over them, such as a body shape appropriate to moving elegantly about in the water. Now, you might argue that when the salmon jumps up in its fight against the current, it is only re-acting to instinctual mating programming which is itself a sort of (psychological) force called emotion (so called for its motivational properties—it gets things moving), and I suspect you are correct, but that does not change the fact that the salmon enjoys some degree of freedom over its environment, that is not afforded to the inanimate (means "non-living", not having an animus or spirit, breath of life) objects that make up that environment (which, however, are blessed with freedom from having to worry about spawning, acquiring lunch, et cetera), and that liberty has much to do with control of forces.

Moving up the evolutionary ladder a few rungs, humans seem to possess more control over their actions and environments than do salmon, and we also seem to enjoy more freedom of will (for what it's worth, it seems the more freedom of will something has, the less predictable is its behavior). I suspect there is a significant connection there, and although entire volumes have been written in the debate of how to properly define will and how free it really ever is, I will proceed under this simple assumption: When we make a decision to do this instead of that, we are exercising our will, more or less free from the forces that influence our decision and those that oppose our execution of it into action.

In the Star Wars roleplaying game, there are three basic Force skills that produce all myriad of Jedi powers: control, sense, and alter. First is the ability to control oneself in order to make possible the ways of the Force. Most occult programs begin with exercising control over body and mind, often emphasizing attunement with the Way Things Work. Such harmony may lead naturally into sense, the ability to feel the Force beyond oneself. Here we may find feats of divination and so-called extrasensory perception. Once the Jedi has developed sufficient rapport (to borrow some parlance from NLP) with the Force, they may begin to alter entity-events beyond their "natural" control.

Here are the Force powers from the Star Wars roleplaying game (2^nd edition revised), with my own descriptions of how they might correspond to a galaxy much, much nearer. I propose emphasizing these Force skills and powers over the traditional magics of conjuration, evocation, invocation, divination, et cetera, for the would-be Jedi or Sith.

Control

Most of the powers in this section should be more or less known by those who have practiced occult discipline. These often involve some type of trance (the ability to maintain one's will against resistance can be thought of as a trance of the will).

• Absorb/Dissipate Energy. Think of firewalkers.
• Accelerate Healing
• Control Pain
• Emptiness. Good ol' no-mind. Void. Et cetera.
• Hibernation Trance
• Reduce Injury
• Remain Conscious. Useful during moments of extreme gnosis or boring sex.
• Resist Stun

Sense

• Life Detection. The ability to feel there is life nearby. Also the ability to read whether one of those lives is sensitive to the Force ("gifted for the work," as we say in hoodoo).
• Life Sense. The ability to read the location and/or condition of a specific life, exempli gratia, where is grandma and how is she faring?
• Magnify Senses. Recognized by NLP practitioners galaxy—er, world—wide.
• Receptive Telepathy. Ever know what someone is thinking without them telling you so?
• Sense Force. Feeling power spots and the like.

Alter

Actio in distans. Spooky.

• Injure/Kill. The most common example I can think of here is a curse or evil eye, but combined with the following power, it is conceivable that immediate, situational damage could be inflicted.
• Telekinesis. That's mind bullets, Kyle. There are many public stories of psychokinetic feats and tutorials for learning them.

Control + Sense

• Lightsaber Combat. Expert martial artists are notorious for extraordinary feats. The GoDan test of ninjutstu is the first that comes to my mind, but there are countless others.
• Projective Telepathy. Ever project onto that person across the bar, the notion that they should pay attention to you? Yeah, like that.

Control + Alter

The laying on of hands... psychic surgery... the ability to stop bleeding with a simple touch... all (un)common examples of Force powers right here in our own galaxy.

• Accelerate Another's Healing
• Control Another's Pain
• Return Another to Consciousness
• Transfer Force

Control + Sense + Alter

• Affect Mind. "These are not the droids you're looking for." Known as "pacing and leading" in NLP.

Like its physical namesake, the Force appears to be amoral; the good and bad of it are determined by how it is used and what it is used for. And like Western ceremonial magic, the Force has its left-hand path: the Dark Side. Now, most chaos magicians I know consider their mojo above or beyond morality; right and wrong refer simply to the constituents of successful magic, and are usually determined on the merits of success alone. However, as I mentioned earlier, the idea of a (the!) Force-with-a-capital-F is a essentially religious, id est, it is a supernatural Big Picture. Big Pictures tend to give their viewers senses of purpose, and senses of purpose often lead to ideas of morality. Combining ideas from Western ceremonial magic and Star Wars, we might map the moral landscape of the Force thusly:

      High
       |
Dark -- -- Light
       |
      Low

As with Western ceremonial magic, high refers to that which brings knowledge and illumination, while low produces more material results.

Throughout the Star Wars films there are many hints to what separates the "light" (which is never actually called that) and dark sides, but no explicit definitions. However, the difference appears akin to the same found in many human (sub)cultures: altruism versus selfishness. So, exempli gratia, we can recall Yoda instructing, "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack," vis-à-vis Palpatine blasting Windu with blue lightning while yelling, "Power! Unlimited power!"

The light and dark sides of the Force can also be compared to inhibitory and excitatory modes of gnosis. Yoda teaches Luke that he will know the "good" side from the "bad" when he is "calm, at peace, passive," a sentiment which is also felt in the Jedi Code:

There is no emotion; there is peace.
There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.
There is no passion; there is serenity.
There is no death; there is the Force.

By contrast, the Sith find their powers through their passions. Anyone who has ever loved or hated someone might know how that feels.

Users are likely to encounter the same issues of morality using the Force as any other system. I leave it to the reader whether to side with the Jedi or Sith on this (certainly, the latter have cooler threads).

¹ Actually, present science recognizes only four real forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces. Of those, the only one we have ever actually felt, says science, is electromagnetism.

² It may be worth noting that some interpretations of Aleister's definition find it incompatible with what I previously said regarding supernatural forces, since many quite natural activities—in fact, just about all of them—can be considered as changes caused according to one's will. Indeed, Uncle Al goes on to illustrate the magic of something as mundane as writing a book: "It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take 'magical weapons', pen, ink, and paper; I write 'incantations'—these sentences [...]" (Magick in Theory and Practice). I suspect Al's definition had more to do with will than action (depending on where you look, the two form a continuum); that the fact the former happens at all, that we are able to pull any single event from the black hat of limitless possibility, is fundamentally magical (actually, as the Schwa Corporation and William Ross Ashby have stated and demonstrated, the possibilities aren't endless, but what's a little hyperbole among friends? We still have not located the so-called seat of consciousness to everyone's or even the majority's satisfaction).

³ As a wise La Habra High School psychology teacher once explained, there is no up or down from a sphere (curved space); only toward and away.