Imagination · “Feel It Real”
The Magical Imagination
To construct a vivid, multi-sensory mental image and charge it with desire and will until it stands as real to the inner senses as an outer perception — Conway’s operative use of the trained ‘magical imagination’.
From a relaxed body and steady attention, build the chosen image piece by piece — form, colour, then every sense — until it is held almost as vividly as a real perception. Charge it with desire and directed will so it lives with intent. Hold it steady, then release and return firmly to the material world. In Conway’s terms, working the “magical imagination”; in plain terms, charged, sustained, multi-sensory visualisation.
What it is
Once relaxation and concentration are secure, Conway turns the student to what he treats as magic’s central faculty: the trained imagination. The practice is to build a chosen image in the mind’s eye piece by piece — form, colour, and as many senses as can be brought in — until it is held so vividly that it approaches a “controlled hallucination,” and then to charge it with desire and will.
For Conway this is imagination used as a faculty of creation (The Inner Creates the Outer), governed by trained attention (The Inner Creates the Outer), brought to life by associated feeling and desire (The Inner Creates the Outer), and made reliable through repetition (The Inner Creates the Outer).
In his framing the vivified image impresses itself on the “astral light”; in plain terms it is highly disciplined, emotionally-charged visualisation.
The Method
From Conway’s instructions in Magic: An Occult Primer (Ch. 4, “Visualization and the Training of the Magician”):
- Start from the secured concentration. The image-work assumes the preliminary discipline — a relaxed body and an attention that can rest on one thing at will.
- Build the image deliberately. Construct the chosen image step by step rather than trying to flash it whole; add form and colour first, then fill in detail until it is definite and stable.
- Engage every sense. Conway treats visualisation as a pictorial but multi-sensory act — bring in sound, texture, scent and weight as well as sight, so the image is “lived” rather than merely seen.
- Sharpen toward “controlled hallucination.” Push the vividness until the image is held in the mind almost as solidly as an outer perception — the deliberate, controlled vividness Conway sets as the goal of the training.
- Charge it with desire and will. The vivifying step: pour the appropriate desire and feeling into the held image and direct the will toward it, so the image is not inert but alive with intent.
- Hold it steady, then release. Sustain the charged image (this is where the concentration training pays off), then deliberately let it go and return attention firmly to the material world. (Sourcing: the build-deliberately → engage-the-senses → push-to-vivid → charge-with-desire-and-will → hold → release sequence is Conway’s stated teaching, faithfully ordered; “controlled hallucination” and “Visualization and the Training of the Magician” are his terms.)
Source & Lineage
Set out in the practical section of Magic: An Occult Primer (1972), where Conway makes the trained imagination the operative engine of his whole system, working on the “astral light” he expounds in the theory section.
The lineage runs through ceremonial magic’s “magical images” and god-form work (Golden Dawn, Dion Fortune), Levi’s disciplined imagination acting on the astral light, and the Theosophical thought-form doctrine.
Common refinements
Flashing it whole. Build from a simple core outward, piece by piece, rather than attempting the entire picture at once.
- Sight-only image. A flat visual stays weak; bring in the other senses to make it “lived.”
- Cold image. Without the charge of desire and directed will, the image is inert.
- Chasing the hallucination unsafely. The vividness is a means, not a thrill; keep it controlled and bounded, and ground afterward.
- Magical over-reliance. Treat the working as charged rehearsal and intention, not a substitute for doing the thing — and never aim it at another person without consent.