Ever since she began studying Jane’s work fourteen years ago, my companion, Laurel Lee Davies, has been very conscious of the conflict between the rationalistic dominance so common in our culture, and the potential for greater development that she sensed within herself. As she researched Jane’s published and unpublished notes, journals, and books for The Magical Approach, Laurel learned that my wife had originally intended to call this book The Magical Approach: A Jane/Seth Book, and wrote of it as being “a psychic-naturalistic journal.” If Jane had planned to add to Seth’s original sessions, what might she have included? We found several of her relevant essays, and have presented them in these appendices and in her Introduction. Laurel pointed out a number of forceful passages Jane wrote on cultural acceptance in The God of Jane in 1980 — the same year in which she dictated The Magical Approach for Seth. (Prentice-Hall published The God of Jane in 1981.)

The Magical Approach is a perfect example of a scientifically-unacceptable method of working with reality. Yet, The Magical Approach works. I can state that with amazement from my own experience. At first it may not seem to be giving you the results you expect, but you are working within spacious time. Your schedule may have to change. You may start bringing in different experiences than you think you are seeking, then materialize your original requirements later on. Your wish-focus disappears into Frameworks 2, 3, and 4,¹ and then reappears later. Natural magic: This process can bring you more complex ideas and proof than you conceived of.

The complexity of life and reality encompasses both positive and not-so-positive experiences within value fulfillment. The Magical Approach can help with both. I will be interested in hearing about your magical research.

As her psychic abilities began to rapidly grow, following her initiation of the Seth material late in 1963, Jane couldn’t help but become more and more concerned about consciously enlarging her “scope of identity.” It became obvious to us later, of course, that even her first doubts and questions about things psychic made it inevitable that she would confront such a basic issue. As was characteristic of us, also, we worked by ourselves for a long time as we attempted to learn more about what we were doing. But naive creatures that we were, when we did begin to reach out we were quite unprepared for the skepticism we would meet from the learned “establishment.” In large part, that rejection was to continue. Very understandable, then, that Jane, both for herself and for Seth, would write so eloquently about the disparity between her psychic abilities and “the currently scientifically-oriented blend of rationalism,” as Seth describes that quality earlier in this Session Six for The Magical Approach.

Suddenly I had a whole bunch of thoughts that I wanted to write up regarding this … “magical orientation” Rob was speaking of. Seth’s “Framework 2” would be this magical area, of course, I thought. [...] The magical orientation to reality would include intellectual activity. [...]

[...] “Nonsense,” I muttered, “it’s the heat!” Because I knew that Seth would speak about the magical “connection.” I managed another grin — and who should know more about “magic” than Seth? Didn’t he emerge magically to begin with?

A DAY IN WHICH MAGIC COMES TO LIFE AND SETH DESCRIBES WHAT “THE MAGICAL APPROACH” TO LIFE IS

[...] He was saying that we were immersed in “magic” no matter what we called it, that manifestations of telepathy, and so forth, were just places where our magic “showed.” [...]

[...] Smiling, hearty, Seth talked about magic and cause and effect, but at the same time he demonstrated a magic that is beyond the clever manipulation of appearances. [...]

Gramacy was a psychologist and a magician, and he came to our house because he was a scientist looking for some real magic. [...]

[...] But somehow in my mind at least, not recording that session added to it’s magical quality … the spontaneous psychological or psychic transformation came and went … We were sitting at the living-room table with the lamplight clear on my face; Gramacy could follow Seth’s psychological passage; see my features change, taking on ever so subtly those other contours. [...]

Some mountain climbers, when asked why they climb a certain peak, respond “because the mountain is there to be climbed,” so the natural approach, the magical approach, is to be used because it exists—and because it represents an open doorway into a world of reality that is always present, always at the base of all of your cultures and experience. Theoretically at least, the magical approach should be used because it represents the most harmonious method of life (underlined). [...]

The magical approach puts you in harmony with your own individual knowledge of the universe. It puts you in touch with the magical feeling of yourself that you had as a child, and that is familiar to you at levels usually beyond your physical knowledge of yourself. [...]

(With pauses:) Ruburt is truly beginning to understand that the Magical Approach is indeed the natural approach to life’s experience. [...]

To some extent tonight’s relatively brief session should remove senses of urgency on your parts, or of self-criticism, that make you question when or how can you “learn to make” the magical approach work in any specific way—that is, why can you not learn to make the approach work in, say, helping Ruburt’s condition in a faster, more effective fashion? [...]

My definition of magic is this: Magic is nature unimpeded, or magic is life unimpeded. It is true that your thoughts and emotions and beliefs form the reality that you experience — but it is also true that this creative construction is, in a manner of speaking, magically formed. [...]

[...] In any case, magic is everywhere in the operation of your body, and in the operation of the world.

[...] Instead, of course, your intellectual abilities are supported and promoted by that inner mixture of spontaneity and order that so magically combine to form both your reality and the reality of the world.

“Another great dream of Rob’s. In our sessions lately Seth has been talking about the natural self or natural person, saying that it is also the magical person. [...] His closest connection to magic would be his comics experience when he drew Captain Marvel — a magical character. [...] I think that Rob is himself in the dream, represented by the super character as the magical self; and also that he is the assistant who had prepared the figure’s head.

The magical approach takes it for granted that the human being is a united creature, fulfilling purposes in nature even as the animals do, whether or not those purposes are understood. (Pause.) The magical approach takes it for granted that each individual has a future, a fulfilling one, even though death may be tomorrow. The magical approach takes it for granted that the means for development are within each individual, and that fulfillment will happen naturally. [...]

[...] The intellect, again, operates magically, spontaneously, automatically. Its most keen reasoning processes rise as a result of that natural magical action [...]

First of all, if you realize that the intellect itself is a part of nature, a part of the natural person, a part of magical processes, then you need not overstrain it, force it to feel isolated, or put it in a position in which paranoid tendencies develop. It is itself supported, as your intuitions are, by life’s magical processes. [...]

“At the same time, it’s Rob’s usual self, learning from the creature-magical self, who then ‘gets the evidence,’ enlarges the magical hole in the glass; signifying two things — that the so-called usual consciousness can learn from the magical part, follow its lead and therefore catch itself ‘performing miracles.’

Now in your dream, you were quite clearly seeing the threshold between physical reality and the magical dimension in which that physical reality has its source. [...] The dog’s desire for food led him to walk magically through the door, for the desires of the natural creature are satisfied (pause) with an ease that has nothing to do with your ideas of work. [...]

This will allow you to include the feeling of inner, magical “work” into your calculations. It would also begin (underlined) to give you a feeling for the magical support that upholds you both, and your lives — the support that Ruburt can count upon, and that can bring about the solution to his physical difficulties. [...]

“This is another terrific dream, continuing the one in the last session, in which Rob was constructing an image of the magical self — seeing it as a kind of Captain Marvel character. In this dream, though, he uses the magic himself, making it far more accessible.

[...] I couldn’t remember what I’d said as Seth — and I wasn’t sure if I knew what magic was — or wasn’t — But I knew that the night was … magical, alive with its own natural ceremonies. [...]

Yet all of those events seemed to happen in a slightly different kind of atmosphere than before, as Seth’s ideas of the Magical Approach cast their light upon current behavior. Numerous but subtle instances of “magical” orientation kept appearing in our lives. [...]

[...] We only spoke to him for an hour, and he said he had wondered earlier what he’d do with the whole evening … so what exactly happened at the magical level of activity?

The same night I had an experience with a mental conversation [that turned out to be precognitive].¹ I think both instances represent activity and communication … at the magical level. [...]

The natural person is indeed the magical person, and you have both to some extent had very recent examples of such activity. [...]

[...] You were each struck by the magical ease with which you seemed, certainly, to perceive and act upon information — information that you did not even realize you possessed.

[...] All of this involves relating to reality in a more natural, and therefore magical, fashion. [...]

Being your own natural and magical self when you dream, you utilize information that is outside of the time context experienced by the so-called rational mind. [...]

In other words, the magical approach and the so-called rational one are to be combined in a certain fashion for best results. [...] They may also, however, have quit their jobs, ignored impulses to find other work, or to take any rational approaches, and rely upon, say, the magical approach alone. [...]

[...] Laurel is helping greatly as we put The Magical Approach together. [...] She has also been working with and choosing the published and unpublished Seth sessions for The Magical Approach. [...]

[...]

[...] Jane has done excellent work interpreting the dreams; some of my nighttime excursions have resulted from these sessions on the magical approach.

[...] Coupled with this is the idea that magic, as we call it, reflects a basic part of our natural mental equipment and abilities, but that our present course of action, our focusing upon the material and the intellectual — the ‘reasonable’ portions of our psyche — has created artificial divisions, in which magic seems quite ‘unreasonable’ or unreal. Actually, our need for magic is a very real, vital, and integral portion of our psyches.

[...] Ruburt had also been thinking newly about the magical approach from ideas in your own notes² that he had just read. [...] As if to say, “Yes, the magical approach does indeed operate, and this is how.”

“The conscious idea of magic, then, is a mask, or contrived version, of the psyche’s innate clairvoyant, telepathic, and precognitive abilities. We permit distorted versions of those attributes to surface as magic, as entertainment — which thus relieves us of the need to take them seriously. [...]

“Added a little later: Jane said this material on the magical personality ‘… really turned me on.’ She’s been doing some writing of her own on our magical orientation. [...]

Ruburt has indeed made excellent strides, of late, in dealing with beliefs, and in switching orientation, so that he is beginning to learn to use the magical approach—which is, again, the natural one. [...]

In those states, while his body is resting, he is learning greater agility both physically and in natural manipulation of the magical approach in general. [...]

(9:36.) You should both to some extent have further experiences now in all areas of your life with the magical or natural kind of orientation to physical events. [...]

Remember again that the intellect can see only so far, and that it uses the cause-and-effect kind of logic, while magical events leapfrog that kind of orientation. [...]

(We thought her desire has been triggered by a book a reader had mailed so that we received it yesterday—Magical Child, by Joseph Chilton Pierce, copyright 1977. [...] Jane said she thought Magical Child contained ideas reminiscent of her own and Seth’s ideas, and was also remindful of a book idea she’s considering at the moment, on the magical self. [...]

His idea of a project on the magical approach now is excellent, for it suggests a new concentration or focus in which the natural and magical aspects of existence are courted, and the characteristics of the natural magical person encouraged to show themselves. [...]

First of all, some of the ideas in the Magical Child book are excellent, and though he has not read the book thoroughly by any means, some new understandings have been reached through the use of those ideas and his own recent experiences by Ruburt.

An understanding of the issues as I just explained them automatically alters the nature of what is left of those old bondings, thereby releasing the natural, magical properties of the child or natural person within, who possesses its own built-in matrix of safety and trust.

[...] So closely do those 13 sessions fit together that it’s most difficult to give excerpts.⁵ Seth’s magical-approach material represents one of his best efforts to help us, as well as others. [...] The title of the new book would be automatic: The Magical Approach to Reality: A Seth Book.

In the meantime, early in August Jane had laid Seven Three aside once more and returned to the book of poetry she’d had in progress for a year.⁶ And on August 15 she happily announced that she’d come up with the complete title she had been searching for all that time: If We Live Again: Or, Public Magic and Private Love. [...] Two days later, Jane began writing the first of the three essays she had planned for the book: “Poetry and the Magical Approach to Life.” [...]

[...] I’d wanted to show the first two items for several years, and surely the reader can divine how they’re related to the poem and to Seth’s material on the magical approach to reality. The next three excerpts are either from, or are directly related to, later sessions in the “magical” series.

[...] Right now, I just want to note that since she gave the last session for this book, the 919th on June 9, Jane has come through with a series of 15 private, or deleted, sessions—13 of them on what Seth calls “the magical approach to reality.”

[...] There are many books written about occult knowledge, or magical knowledge. Most of them are filled with distortions, but they are all efforts to uncover man’s natural magical reasoning. [...]

[...]

[...] This is the kind of “reasoning” that is the source from which thinking emerges, and you might think of it as magical reasoning.

Those improvements came about in their way magically, because he has begun to use and understand this material. [...]

[...] Each time I think of beginning MAGICAL APPROACH I feel this reluctance; I’m not sure what bugs me, the copying of records, putting together the days events or what—but i want more of the fun and magic of it for myself, and less hard work. I’d planned a consecutive story line book including some of robs dreams with interpretations yet feel strain there now, showing how this detail or that one fits the picture, this noon it came to me that the approach seemed to rational at this time; i wanted one that was lighter in tone, quicker yet more expansiveso if anything the books technique would be magical itself…. [...]

[...] We talked about the many delays involved in our producing Mass Events and Dreams. She’s “felt good” about finishing Chapter 11 of Dreams a week ago, but has done little on Magical Approach recently, except to reread her rough work for the beginning of that book. (She began to slack off from Magical Approach early last October—two months ago—after working well on the first three chapters.) Tonight, I even speculated, admitted my fear, that in a way she’s embarked upon a long-range campaign to at least drastically reduce, if not eliminate, her communication with the world, for one sacrifice follows another in an order that can hardly be accidental, Jane revealed that she’d had similar thoughts.

“Some mountain climbers, when asked why they climb a certain peak, respond: ‘Because the mountain is there to be climbed’—so the natural approach, the magical approach, is to be used because it exists, and because it represents an open doorway into a world of reality that is always present, always at the base of your cultures and experience. Theoretically at least, the magical approach should be used because it represents the most harmonious method of life (underlined). [...]

“The magical approach puts you in harmony with your own individual knowledge of the universe. It puts you in touch with the magical feeling of yourself that you had as a child, and that is familiar to you at levels usually beyond your physical knowledge of yourself. [...]

(Long pause.) The entire magical approach is indeed at your command, and with your strong impetus now, you should be able to put it to use in far better fashion than you have before. [...]

[...] The finger that has so upset you both (Long pause at 8:37, leaning to her right, dozing....) I keep trying to explain the magical approach in new ways, to bring home its great effectiveness. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) Throughout the centuries there have been various ceremonies, rituals and so forth, meant to activate the magical approach. [...]

Your morning suggestions, however given, should include the assurances that the universe is indeed inclined in your direction—that you impress it with the feelings of your heart and emotions—that it is alert and responsive to your needs, since at certain levels you and the universe are inseparable, so see yourselves and your private environment not only as safe and secure, but magically touched by that great vitality that is the wellspring of life, so that each day all events work for your advantage. [...]

[...] The power to reason comes from Framework 2. In the terms of this discussion, you are able to reason as a result of “magical” events that make reason itself possible. The term “magic” has in one way or another been used to simply describe events for which reason has no answer — events that exist outside of the framework in which reason feels comfortable.

To that extent then the physical universe, like each physical body, is “magical.” [...]

[...] In the truest sense, the birth magically happens, as miraculous in those terms as the so-called initial emergence of life upon the planet itself. [...]

[...] I am letting events magically emerge as they grow beneath the surface of your lives — because Ruburt likes happy surprises. [...]

Before presenting the promised excerpts on the magical approach, I want to note that Seth is simply saying that from Framework 2 (and possibly from other frameworks) we draw whatever information we want in whatever way we choose to focus upon it: positively, negatively, magically, literally, skeptically, and so forth. [...] Every reincarnational and counterpart and probable self, located in whatever neatly packaged compartment of time—past, present, or future—can utilize the magical approach as a matter of choice, then. [...]

And: “The magical approach takes it for granted that the human being is a united creature, fulfilling purposes in nature even as the animals do, whether or not those purposes are understood. The magical approach takes it for granted that each individual has a future, a fulfilling one, even though death may be tomorrow. The magical approach takes it for granted that the means for development are within each individual, and that fulfillment will happen naturally. [...]

Among the subjects not discussed so far are Seth’s (and our own) ideas on reincarnation, counterparts, probable realities, and Frameworks 1 and 2. Jane briefly referred to Seth’s “magical approach” material in her dictation last month (see her own session of April 16, 1982, in Essay No. [...] So as counterpoint to her writings on the sinful self, I’ll be presenting two excerpts to hint at what Seth does mean by his magical approach.

Aside from any books that he may produce himself (and on whatever subjects), I’ve already made plans to put together a short volume featuring Seth’s discussions on the magical approach to reality. [...] She may also contribute an introduction to the book, showing how Seth’s and her own sinful-self information are related to the magical approach.

The events themselves discussed in the newspaper article point up the same kind of magical affiliations. The c-e-l-l-s (spelled) of the young men in question were always in communication, and all of those elements needed to bring about such a reunion took place at that magical level of activity. [...]

ROB USING THE MAGICAL APPROACH.

[...]

You used the magical approach. [...]

(9:45.) The intellect is a vital organizer even if it is not aware of the magical levels of activity from which often its best ideas emerge.