The human mind holds the secret of Creation, plus one of the greatest manifestations of creative energy: thought. Look around the room in which you are reading these words. The books on the shelf, your clothes, the magazine in your hand—every single thing was created by thought. Someone's idea of shape, color, and design was the very beginning of each one.

Your Divine Heritage
Those who understand and master the art of thought forming can make of their lives what they will. Thoughts are "things in potential," and by understanding and using the Law of Like Attracts Like, we can change, create, or manipulate the world around and within us. The only thing that prevents this is the little voice inside our head that constantly denies our divine heritage.

The voice within asserts that only "God can create" according to the words of holy books and holy men. Yet every time you assemble the raw ingredients for a meal and one half hour later put food on the table, you have created it, not God. He has better things to do, which is why He leaves the smaller things to us. It must irritate Him when every time He passes this way we are busy praying for Him to do things He designed us to do for ourselves.

The Law of Attraction works from the highest level to the lowest. Atoms, particles, and neutrons are attracted to each other to make larger areas of matter. Men and women are attracted to each other to make other men and women. We are drawn towards building things and think up designs to make that possible. We desire beautiful things and think up ways to make, assemble, draw, or create in a thousand different ways. Writers think up characters and locations and put them together in a variety of situations in order to create imaginary worlds in which other people can lose themselves. Poets and artists paint with colour and words the thoughts that fill their minds. Any clairvoyant will tell you that one of the most wonderful, instructive, and intriguing places you can visit is a handicraft store. The colors, ideas, shapes, forms and flights of fancy that fill them are as good as a Disney film any day. All those people milling around with creative thoughts and ideas filling their heads are a total delight.

From Nothing to Something
Because I write about creative visualization, I am used to seeing what I create gradually take shape on the inner levels and then move down to the level of manifestation. I watch characters come to birth and often see them change themselves because they have their own ideas about how they want to develop. Having just completed a book on thought forms in collaboration with my long-time friend "Herbie" Brennan, I feel I can claim to know more than a little about such things. The very way in which the book Magical Use of Thought Forms came to be illustrates how easy or even incidental it can be.

Two years ago, desperately looking for new workshop theme, I went along my book shelves looking for inspiration. Now I have a somewhat strange outlook on life; in England we call it being eccentric. It is a family trait. I tend to make everything around me into "living" things by giving them names or forms. I name my computers, washing machines, and dishwashers. I have always imagined my bookshelves to be like old-fashioned school benches with the books themselves sitting with their legs dangling over the edge (okay, I said I was weird). The said legs are clad in brightly colored stockings.

It Helps to Yell at Your Books
On this particular day I prowled along the shelves in search of anything that might offer an idea for a workshop. I had been at it for the better part of a morning and was getting irritated, so I yelled at them.

"Stop just sitting there … one of you has what I want … Who is it??

At that point I noticed one of the books was upside down—with its legs in the air! I hate books being upside down, it is undignified, so I took it out and turned it right side up. It was titled Thoughtforms, published in 1896—over a hundred years old. I opened it, glanced through the pages, and decided then and there to make this my theme.

As I went more deeply into the subject, I turned up writings, articles, and letters from my late teacher. Totally enthralled, I began to form it into a workshop. Six weeks later I was standing in front of a group of people and taking them through the ideas, exercises, and illustrations of what I had uncovered. It went well, and somebody with more than a touch of the prophet in his make up asked if I was going to make the information into a book. I laughed it off … one needs time to write a book, and I am always short on time.

After the workshop I went off to Ireland to see my friends Jackie and Herbie Brennan. Full of enthusiasm, I outlined the workshop, the theme, and its success. The planted thought form of a book suddenly became very real, too real for comfort. To my astonishment I actually heard myself suggesting to Herbie that we write a book together.

"You can do the scientific bit better than I can Herbie; I'll do the practical bits."

We ended up writing a fairly comprehensive synopsis, putting it together with haste. Then we actually e-mailed it off to the publisher. This done, we told each other that we would not hear anything for at least a month or more and went to bed.

Now We Had Really Done It
It came as a shock to have a reply within days. Basically it said, "We like it; we'll have it; when can we have it?" This sobered us up considerably. We looked at each other and thought, "Now we have to write it!"

One person in a workshop, just one, had "seen" the information as a book and wanted it to be a book. Despite our apprehension, Herbie and I poured our hearts and souls into the book for it soon became obvious to us that it filled a niche that had been empty for too long. Five months after the workshop, it arrived on the desk of the editor in the form of a manuscript. Now you can hold the book in your hands—a perfect example of a "thought form" manifesting itself.

We all desire things and some things we are destined never to have as to have them would alter the course you need to follow. But there are many other things you can bring into your life through the art of thought forming.

The most important part is to apply the golden rule of ethics in all your occult work, not just in this one area. Any occultist, of any tradition, who forgets that rule lets down the whole of his or her companions.

Even Daren and Samantha Had Ethics
I am sure most of you have seen the re-runs of a '70s series called Bewitched. The comedy series was very popular and most of the episodes revolved around the mortal husband's veto on his witch wife using her powers. At the time, most of us were telling ourselves what a nerd he was: "Fancy not letting Samantha use her magical powers to cook, clean and bring storybook characters to life for her daughter to play with."

Watching those episodes lately, I began to see the husband's point of view. His human ethics were telling him to do things the long way round.

Both had a point. He could say with truth that if his wife never really worked at anything, she would miss the satisfaction of doing a job well done. She, quite rightly, wanted to make her life brighter and have more time to enjoy her family. Knowing when to use magic is more important than being able to use it.

Using your ability to create with thought power does not give you the right to use it indiscriminately or without taking the consequences into consideration. There are some parts of Magical Use of Thought Forms that need a high level of ethical behavior. We have, in fact, gone out on a limb in disclosing certain areas of magic kept secret for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. I take very seriously, however, something said by Dion Fortune in the thirties. I paraphrase: "You can shout the secrets of the universe from the roof tops and only those who are ready will understand it."

Are You Ready?
We wrote the book because it was time for its teachings to be made public. Each quarter of a century, someone takes a risk and puts out new material that has been hidden for centuries. Often they are criticized for doing so, but they do it because the time is right. Herbie and I knew that this was one of those times. You, the reader, must be the judge. You are the one who will use it, who must learn to fine tune it and use it with knowledge, courage, and above all, with ethics.