The Secret Truth About Visualization: Understanding Imagination

 We talk a lot about the witch's pyramid, faith, imagination, will and secrecy, and those are the four cornerstones of that pyramid. When those four cornerstones are in balance and strong, our ability to work practical magic is quite high. One of those cornerstones has come up frequently lately, and that's the one called imagination.

There's a, a rising trend in people who will reach out to me, very disappointed. They believe they can't perform magic because they say they have aphantasia, and aphantasia is a word that means the inability to visualize. And they believe that since they have this disorder that they are worried that they can't perform magic, and I wanna disabuse us of that right now.

The. Actual disorder of aphantasia is a fairly new phenomenon and they're not able to clinically diagnose it yet with any certainty. However, they have been able to determine that true aphantasia, the absolute inability to create images within the mind is limited to under 1% of the population, and even within that 1% of the population.

Most of them are still able to have visual dreams, which means that their capacity for visualization and imagination is intact. It's just not under their conscious control. And two, there have been studies, recent studies that the majority of those people in that very small percentile. Are able to improve their ability to make visual images with practice so that the actual inability to do it is even smaller than initially reported.

So that's good news right there. It may not be that you have a congenital disability and that there's no hope for you in that regard. It may not be the case, but even if it is the case, I still want you to feel good about being able to practice Magic. Imagination has as its root word, image, the ability to create imagery.

It's an unfortunate word in the witches pyramid because it really could be called creativity instead of imagination. Think about people who were born blind. They've never seen anything yet. It's impossible to conceive that those people have no creativity just because they've never had the ability to see an image.

In fact, some of the most gifted composers. Musicians, performers and authors are blind since birth, so the ability to create is not something that is tied only to the ability to see visual images. Not at all. If you have the ability to be creative on any level, that is that corner of the witches pyramid, even if you have a complete inability to create a visual image in your mind's eye, it does not mean that you have no power of creativity.

If you had no ability to be creative, you would not be able to speak, you would not be able to choose something off of a menu. You would not be able to find your way home because anytime a choice comes up in your life, your mind creates experiences of what? 2, 3, 4 things you have to choose from in order for you to make that choice.

If you open up a menu and it says, special today, meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy. You may not be able to see those things in your mind's eye, but you know what they are. You're able to have a recall about what those things are. You're able to say, nah, I don't want that, or, Ooh, that sounds good. If you weren't able to create, you wouldn't be able to decide.

It would be impossible because you'd be like, I know I've had it, but I don't know what meatloaf is. Now, let's say there was an item on that menu called grilled asparagus, and you've never had grilled asparagus before. But you know what a grill is. You know what grilled things are. You know what asparagus is.

You can come up with a general idea of what grilled asparagus might be, even though you've never had it before. That's because you're creative. You have the ability to create something out of nothing in your mind. That's what that corner of the witch's pyramid is talking about, your ability to create.

Now a lot of aphantasia, and I'm not saying it doesn't exist. It does, but a lot of aphantasia is a symptom, not something that's congenital. And I'm not also not saying that there is no such thing as congenital aphantasia. And if that is truly what you have, the good news is that your powers of creativity manifest in other ways.

But the non congenital aphantasia that we have in this society is, I've been saying this for decades now, a product of our screen time. It's an atrophy that we have. We don't have the ability to have imagination like we used to because we don't need it. In the old days, we had sexual fantasies, not pornography.

We had stories, not video games, not films, not television. So we were required to use our imaginations in order to enjoy things, in order to function properly. But the more we have visual stimuli fed to us nonstop, there's no need. We have no need for it. We have no need to imagine anything. So it doesn't surprise me that Aphantasia is running rampant.

I don't believe that the majority of that is congenital, and it's been proven that it's not. There was a small study done recently. Uh, I think it was in 2024, of some athletes, because a lot of athletes use visualization in their training. There were people in the study that. Couldn't visualize and so that a Fantasia presented itself and they took them through programs of training and practiced and practiced and practiced, and the majority of them got better, which just proves my point that it's not that we can't visualize, it's just that part of our natural ability has gone unused over the past 50 years, especially since television started.

Back in the day, they used to call it the boob tube and they would say, the more you watch television, the stupider you get, and they weren't wrong. They weren't wrong. When you watch television at the expense of reading, at the expense of storytelling, at the expense of non-visual activities that stimulate imagination, the ability to imagine will atrophy and it will take work to get it back again.

Many of the people that complain that they have aphantasia have it because it's atrophied, not because it's congenital. I would, and it's been proven that the bulk of them have that. Now, the ones that it is congenital, it doesn't matter. You still have creativity. You do. You, you do. When, when you're. At a restaurant experiencing what I just described, you have some way of having a recall, bringing up into your mind what things are so that you can choose.

You have some recall about which way to go on the road when you have to turn some. Many of us, we see it in our mind's eye and we don't even realize that's what we're doing, but you have another way of dealing with it, and whatever that way is, that's your creativity and that's what you wanna lean into.

So if you were born without the ability to visualize, that doesn't mean that you can't be creative. Of course you can. You have to be creative to function. It's impossible to function in this world without having some ability to be creative. Have that corner of the witches pyramid and you can start with where you are and ask yourself, how do I decide things?

When I'm hearing somebody tell me a joke or tell me a story or recalling an incident, how am I recreating that for myself? Everybody's got some ability to be creative. Whether it's in pictures or not, does not ultimately matter. What matters is that you understand that you are a creative being and that part of working magic is asking yourself what you want.

What do I want? If I asked you to take out a piece of paper and a pencil and start writing out your perfect scenario about what would be great, if you can come up with that, you're being creative. Let's say you wanna get married and have a family and you wanna meet the right person, what a wonderful thing to want.

Nothing wrong with that desire. That's what you want. Good. What does that look like for you? What kind of a person, what kind of a relationship? What kind of a home? How many kids do you see yourself? Just, you're not locked into it. Just brainstorm. What is it? Well, if you can come up with any ideas, you're being creative.

So yes, you can create, yes, you're creative. Yes, you have imagination, even if images aren't part of it.

I want you to, as a powerful practitioner of magic, consider disavowing the idea that you don't have the ability to visualize. Let's replace visualization with the word creativity. Let's just replace that. Just take the V word out. Because that's a big bugaboo for some people, because either it's atrophied, it's too hard for them, or they just can't do it.

So what do you do? What do you do when you wanna create? Maybe you have just a sense of it. Maybe it's a feeling that you're creating in your mind. Maybe you're hearing sounds, maybe you have one of those really advanced forms of visualization where you can conjure fragrance. Remember the first time I was able to start Conjuring sense, I was like, Ooh, this is a new one.

I love this. 'cause I'd only been working with visual and auditory creativity when I was working magic. When I started being able to conjure fragrance, I thought, oh, okay. I am getting pretty good at this. But what can you do? You can do something. Lean into what you can do and let the other stuff take care of itself.

Don't worry about it. It's nothing to get upset about, and they get so upset and I feel so bad. I can't visualize. I can never be a witch. Of course you can. Of course you can. If you didn't have enough creativity to be a witch, you wouldn't have enough creativity to live a life because you have to be creative, to be alive and to function unless you're institutionalized, where they do every little thing for you because you are a vegetable.

If you are a sentient being that's making choices in this world, you're a creative being like it or not. That's just it. It's just how it goes. No matter what you think, no matter what anybody tells you, that's the truth. If you can make a choice, you are creative. So since you already are creative, lean into it.

Get better at it. Let's say we weren't talking about creativity. Let's, let's say that we were talking about physical fitness. Now, let's say that all of your limbs are working, that you don't have any real health problems that can negate your ability to have exercise at all. If you're able to get up out of your chair and walk across the room, you have some level of physical fitness.

And if you can do that. If you want your body to get stronger, you can do other forms of exercise as well if you wanted to. And so if you have some creativity, you can make it stronger by using it.

If you took a month or two and you listened to a fairytale every day. Or some other kind of story with lots of visuals every single day, and you look back, I guarantee you your ability to visualize has gotten so much better. It may still not be visual pictures, so maybe the V word is bad, but your creativity has gotten stronger because you've gone to the creativity gym every day for a month or two.

If you're doing something that is making you follow a story that doesn't have ready-made images, you're creating and you're exercising that ability to create. So you can do it. You can do it. And that's all spell casting is, is making up stuff, making believe. It starts off with make believe. When you were a kid, did you never play, make believe, you didn't have any kind of fantasy, you didn't have any kind of fun, any kind of playing at all?

You're just stuck just being the one sole non-creative child in the group? I don't think so. I really don't. I think that if you look, it may have been a unique expression of creativity. It may not have even been like all of your other friends, but you had a wonderful ability to be creative as a child that didn't go anywhere.

It didn't just stop because it was pounded out of you, either through your upbringing or just because of the fact that you decided to start like the rest of us having nothing but screen time where we are bombarded with imagery and we don't ever counteract that by using our own image making capacity.

So yes, if you had it as a child, you still have it, whether it's atrophied or not. Now, if you've never had a dream where there's been a visual involved, you may not be able to visualize, and that's okay. Like I said, just like the blind person can still be creative, you can still be creative. It's just in a different way.

But if visualization is important to you. You dream in visions you were able to use, have, have visuals at any point in your life. I think that you probably still have that ability if you work at it, if it's important to you. Now, it, it's not necessarily important to magic that you visualize. It does make things easier if you can see the light, if you can see the orb.

But if you can't see it. If you can't create visuals in your mind, you can sense it. You can know it's there. You can still make belief. You can still use your powers of creativity to act as if that's there. And if you can act as if something is there, then you've made it up. You've created it with your mind, you've created it out of nothing, that's magic.

And when you combine the ability to create something in your mind with those other. Three pyramid points, faith will and secrecy. You are a powerful witch and you can get stuff done. You can manifest things. You can have things, you can change things in your life. But don't buy into this idea that I can't do it.

Yes, you can. Whether it's visual or not, it doesn't ultimately matter. Even though I pause it to you for your consideration that the bulk of you, it's been proven scientifically, even though it's on a small scale, it's been proven that the bulk of a Fantas can regain their ability to visualize, especially if they dream in visuals.

Which means that that aphantasia is a phenomenon of our times. You can listen to old, old recordings of mine back in the eighties when I was saying this is coming. Our inability to visualize because of the fact that it's atrophying through the screen time that we have, and not counteracting that screen time with good old fashioned storytelling, reading of fiction, practicing our ability to visualize.

So the bulk of aics can recover their ability to do that. It's been proven, at least to some degree, and those that can't, who cares? You've got other abilities to be creative. So stop. Stop talking about why you can't do it, and start figuring out what does work for you. How do you do it? How are you creative?

Maybe you're super unique. Isn't that wonderful? Maybe your ability to be creative is so different than everybody else's, and all of this time you just thought that there was something wrong with you, and instead there's something very right with you. It just doesn't look like everybody else. What a wonderful thing to know.

You can still use your creativity to experience something that's not yet there. And if you can experience something that's not yet there that you are creating in your own mind, you can add that ability to those other three points of the witches pyramid and make stuff happen. You can do it. So don't decide, since I can't do it.

And since there's this word, this must be what I am. And if you decide that that's what you are, you're not even gonna try. And you might say, well, I do try. I do try. I try those visualization exercises. I do read fiction. I do listen to stories. Fine. And if you do that, then you're discovering how you have creativity.

And it may not be in pictures. That doesn't mean that it's not there. That doesn't mean you can't use it. That doesn't mean you can't be just as powerful in magic as somebody that has, uh, the ability to see pictures. I don't buy any of it. Our entertainment has images attached to it. Our news has images attached to it.

Nobody reads the newspaper. That's a thing of the past. We, no, we see it. The more that happens, does it really. Surprise any of us that a Fantasia is making. Its self known in our society, but the good news is we can counteract that. If you put yourself in the context of being in a society where everybody's ability to visualize everybody's ability to have creativity and imagination is atrophying, and you're leaning into yours.

Doesn't that put you kind of ahead of the crowd, that you're doing something about it and nobody else is even worried about it? Nobody else is even thinking about it. To those of you who really believe that you can't do it, the fact that you're worried about it puts you ahead of the crowd that you care care and you can do something about it.

Whether it's, whether it is counteracting. This tendency by exercising that ability to visualize, or by discovering that your creative forces come in a different form, it doesn't matter which, but if you use your creativity and you exercise it, and you mobilize all your inner forces so that you can have a strong sense of creativity, you're ahead of the game, you're ahead of the pack, and the fact that it's concerning to you is actually really good news.

It's really good because you want to, or you wouldn't care, or you wouldn't even notice it. So those of you that are going through this, it's a sign that you're on the right track. Just don't allow yourself to get stymied and say, oh, there's no hope for me. You've got plenty of creativity, but you've gotta use it again and again and again, and you're going to be very successful and strong with your magic as you do that.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I so appreciate you. Until next time, blessed be.