One of the books I’m currently reading is Creativity by Robert Fritz (affiliate link). He provides a fascinating definition of love, within the first couple pages which has really stuck with me. He explains that love is at the center of creativity, but that in the context of creativity is an active force, instead of a passive experience. Love as a passive experience, is an experience where love happens to you and you get some type of benefit from it. In contrast, love as an active force is a form of generative process, where you are actively creating something.
This concept of love as an active force reminds me of another book I’m reading by Christopher Alexander which explores the process of generative creation in context to architecture. Both authors have a similar stance in that they opt for an iterative approach to what is created, recognizing that such an approach brings an organic awareness with it that informs how we appreciate the act of creation and the result.
These perspectives have become an important influence in my practice of magic, writing, and art. I consider that there is a generative process at work when developing a magical working, writing a book, or doing any other type of creative work. I see it in my own practice, where I’ll create a magical working and then end up making little changes to it that allow me to refine the working and produce better results, but also create a deeper connection to the actual work.
There is a deep sense of love at the root of my magical work, and any other creative work I do. When I am creating a new magical practice (or refining one) or writing an article like this, or creating a painting, I feel a deep sense of satisfaction and connection to the work I am doing. I am creating something out of a deep sense of love for what is created and for how it might benefit other people.
This sense of love is not typically spoken of or written about (in general) and its certainly not something I see discussed much in occult circles. Yet it is, in my opinion, central to the work I do. Tapping into this active form of love brings with it a sense of connection with what we’re working with. For example, if I develop a meditation technique, that active sense of love will keep me working on that technique until I feel satisfied with it. After all, I want it to be something more than just a technique I’ve slapped together. And in fact it becomes something more, because the act of creation doesn’t just stop.
When I do a magical working such as the Sphere of Art, it may be the 800th time I’ve done it, but still I bring this active love to the work and it allows me to appreciate how even a working done after so many times can still be refined and experienced differently because of that love and whatever else I’m bringing to the working. Each day my work with the sphere of art is recreated, and it is generative process where this work is gradually developed, refined and built on. Undoubtedly as I continue with the sphere of art, it will continually change.
There’s a reason for that change. The work changes us as much as we change it. The active application of love is something we bring to the creations we manifest, but it also something that acts upon us. It can be a terrible love, because it can cause us to face what we would rather avoid, but it can also be a powerful transmutation of who we are. Really, the act of creation is a co-creative act where the creator is changed as much by the creation, as s/he creates and changes the creation. When we understand this it changes our relationship to the work we’re doing…because we realize that the work isn’t so much being done, as becoming both in the external reality around us and in our own identity.
We become part of this generative experience, being shaped and changed, becoming something different than who and what we were. We create and are created and in that process we can discover something fundamental to any act of creation: The experience of love as a transformative agent that may bring results both within and without, if we are truly open to it.
