I’m always looking for new ideas and concepts to put into my magical toolbox. Recently I’ve been reading Frederick Copleston’s book ‘A History of Philosophy Volume II: Medieval Philosophy.’ The first eight chapters are dedicated to St Augustine (November 354 – 28 August 430) who was one of the founders of the early Catholic church. According to Copleston in the “De Trinitate” or “On The Trinity” Saint Augustine says that “The nature of the mind is such that, ‘when directed to intelligible things in the natural order, according to the disposition of the Creator, it sees them in a certain incorporeal light which is, sui generis or(coming from a unique class of its own) just as the corporeal eye sees adjacent objects in the corporeal light’.

Copleston goes on to say “These words seem to show that the illumination in question is a spiritual illumination which performs the same function for the objects of the mind as the sun’s light performs for the objects of the eye; in other words, as the sunlight makes corporeal thing’s visible to the eye, so the divine illumination makes the eternal truths visible to the mind.”

Ethereal Illumination

As someone who sometimes likes to explore the darker aspects of life, the whole concept that St Augustine provides struck me as compelling in nature and presented me with a cognitive Swiss-army-knife that I can use to explore different ideas and concepts that (come from a unique class of my own) so I came up with a variation of this idea that I’ve called Ethereal Illumination. If the inner light can behave as if it were the sun and be used to illuminate eternal truths then the light of the Moon can be used to discover eternal truths in the dark and hidden realms that few people trod. My inner shadow self and the darkness within me can behave as if it were the Moon shedding light on dark and beautiful mysteries and concepts that I can use to enhance my enjoyment of life. My mind is the Moon looking and discovering new ideas in the eternal majesty of the night. I’ve always thought in a similar way as this but haven’t been able to specifically define it. As ironic as it may seem, St Augustine provided me with that specificity I needed.