Magic Begins With Nothing
The True Work of the Magician
Magic is not belief.
Magic is not faith.
Magic is not fantasy.
Magic is the disciplined art of cutting through illusion until only what is real remains—and then wielding that reality with precision.
This is why magicians must do the Work.
Not to gather more spells or summon spirits like party tricks.
Not to decorate the ego with robes, sigils, or obscure symbols.
But to strip away everything false. Especially the things they want to believe.
I. Belief is Not Magic
Aleister Crowley once wrote, “I slept with Faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with Doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.” He understood something most so-called magicians today forget: that belief is the enemy of truth. Belief locks reality inside a coffin. It demands obedience. Magic demands responsibility.
The magician is not a believer. The magician is a knower—but only after they have confronted and destroyed everything that isn’t them. Belief is lazy. Belief is convenient. Belief is what children are taught. Belief is what cults demand. But magic?
Magic is what remains when belief dies screaming.
II. The Crowleyan Diagnosis
Aleister Crowley’s system—Thelema—is often misrepresented as a collection of obscure rituals and dangerous hedonism. But Crowley’s genius was diagnostic. He built a map of the psyche, a symbolic system capable of testing the practitioner’s sanity, truthfulness, and capacity for will. Ritual, in his view, wasn’t to summon fantasy—it was to collapse the façade.
In The Book of the Law, the cornerstone of Thelema, he writes:
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
This is not permission to do as you please. It is a razor aimed at your throat. Because discovering your True Will means unearthing and confronting everything that is not your will. Everything inherited, absorbed, conditioned, mimicked, or stolen.
The rituals, the invocations, the pathworkings—these are not ends. They are methods for breaking down the false self so that what remains is real. And that real self does not beg for permission. It knows.
III. Regardie and the Cleansing of the Temple
Israel Regardie, Crowley’s personal secretary and student, carried forward Crowley’s work into the 20th century and laid the groundwork for modern Western esotericism. A deeply trained psychologist, Regardie saw firsthand the psychic wreckage that could result when magicians bypassed their own emotional and somatic material in pursuit of “higher” powers.
His verdict was blunt:
“The magician must cleanse the temple before he builds the altar.”
— The Middle Pillar
This cleansing was not symbolic. It was literal, psychological, and bodily. To Regardie, this meant integrating the body and psyche through psychotherapy—especially the Reichian and Jungian schools. He believed no real magical progress could occur without first confronting and unraveling the “emotional armoring” of the body.
This insight would become the seed for something far more radical.
IV. The Lineage Continues: Hyatt and Radical Undoing
Christopher S. Hyatt, born Alan Miller, was Regardie’s student—and the man who took the Work even deeper.
Where Regardie laid the foundation, Hyatt brought the demolition equipment.
A fully initiated member of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), Hyatt was a major figure in the modern magical revival. He was elevated to the Ninth Degree (IX°) within the OTO, and went on to co-found New Falcon Publications, the press that kept alive the works of Crowley, Regardie, Robert Anton Wilson, Timothy Leary, and others on the fringe of serious esotericism.
His books—Undoing Yourself with Energized Meditation, The Psychopath’s Bible, The Black Book series, Sex Magic, Tantra & Tarot, and many others—took the underlying principle of magical initiation and turned it inside out. No more dogma. No more preciousness. No more belief.
“You have been trained to be something other than what you are.
Undoing is the process of remembering what you were before the world got its hands on you.”
Hyatt and Regardie worked closely in the 1980s, combining Regardie’s Reichian-informed bioenergetics with Hyatt’s brutal psychological insight. The result was the foundation of what we now call Radical Undoing:
A system that bypasses the mind altogether and works directly on the physical, emotional, and psychic armoring of the body.
Undoing is not meditation.
Undoing is not therapy.
Undoing is not “healing.”
It is magical exorcism—performed on yourself.
V. Undoing the Body = Undoing the Spell
Most people are not themselves.
They are a collage of reactions, roles, fears, and borrowed voices.
These voices are not just in the head. They are stored in muscle, fascia, breath, and bone.
The clenched jaw that says “Don’t speak.”
The tight shoulders that whisper “Be strong.”
The gut tension that repeats “You’re not safe.”
The smile you wear like a shield.
Undoing forces you to confront these bodily spells, these postural lies you’ve been casting for decades. It strips away the illusions of personality until what remains is raw, trembling, and real.
This is why Undoing works.
Because it isn’t a philosophy.
It’s not a model.
It’s a procedure.
And if you do it long enough, consistently enough, you will begin to hear the real voice—the voice that isn’t full of doubt or conditioning. The voice that knows.
VI. The Will Beneath the Noise
Yes, you will hear voices.
Your mother’s guilt.
Your father’s criticism.
Your ex-lover’s judgment.
Your teacher’s disapproval.
Your priest’s fear.
You will think they are your thoughts. They aren’t.
They are possessions. Hauntings. Scripts.
Radical Undoing helps you face them—not to negotiate with them, but to burn them.
And when the voices go quiet, when the system stops spinning, when the body is no longer in resistance, what remains is silence. Out of that silence arises something subtle, steady, and alien.
It doesn’t shout.
It doesn’t panic.
It doesn’t seek validation.
It simply says: I Am.
That is Will.
That is the real voice.
And that is what magic is for.
VII. The Real Work
This is what it means to do the Work.
Not to “improve.”
Not to believe.
Not to ascend.
But to destroy the layers of falsehood that obscure what you already are.
This is not a metaphor.
It is not a phase.
It is not aesthetic.
It is a brutal, sacred initiation.
Because once everything false is destroyed,
what remains must be true.
Even if it terrifies you.
Especially if it terrifies you.
Practises for the Working Magician
Daily Undoing: 20–30 minutes of bodywork—shaking, breathing, sighing, releasing tension. Focus on jaw, eyes, pelvis.
Voice Tracking: Say aloud the voices in your head. Who do they belong to? Do they lie?
Journaling Prompts:
“Who am I trying to protect?”
“Who benefits from me staying silent?”
“What tension do I carry every day without noticing?”
Void Practice: After Undoing, sit in silence. Don’t seek thoughts. Wait. Let the Will speak.
Final Words
If you call yourself a magician but have not undone yourself,
you are casting spells from inside a cage.
This is not about adding more.
This is about removing everything that isn’t you.
Radical Undoing is not optional.
It is the Work.
Because without it, there is no Will.
No magic.
No freedom.
Only illusion, dressed up in robes.
So:
Do the Work.
Strip it all away.
And what remains—must be true.
Even if it kills you.
Especially if it kills you.
Appendix:
Foundational Sources
Aleister Crowley – The Book of the Law, Magick Without Tears
Israel Regardie – The Middle Pillar, The Tree of Life, Eye in the Triangle
Christopher S. Hyatt – Undoing Yourself, The Psychopath’s Bible, The Black Book Series
Wilhelm Reich – Character Analysis, The Function of the Orgasm
Robert Anton Wilson – Prometheus Rising, Cosmic Trigger
Never heard magic being referred to as seeing through illusion
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