by Kamalla Rose Kaur
First published in 1994
Magic is like cooking soup. The ingredients of the broth are symbols; images, music, costume, fragrance, scripture, poetry, art and prose. The first step to cooking up a bit of magic is to carefully select, prepare and mix together symbol ingredients and then, step two, cook them over the fire of emotion. Serenity, passion, fear, grief, happiness, anger, solemnity, or combinations thereof, all work well as heat sources, dependent, of course, on the chefs desired outcome. This combining and stewing of symbols with emotion is the culinary art of ritual. Once the soup is prepared, you serve it to the public. This third step is a type of theater or live performance. Magicians (politicians, ad men, rock stars and cult leaders among them) know that life is, indeed, a stage and that there is power in taking on roles and in acting them.
That is what I learned during the 20 years that I lived in a cult [i.e. the "Happy, Holy, Healthy Organization"--3HO].
I also learned that an expert cult leader does not cook his brew with inferior ingredients. Easily, 99% of the symbols that my [former] spiritual teacher pulled from his bag of tricks were time tested, pure and sacred ingredients which really did help his students to experience different states of consciousness, to live more peacefully and gracefully and to heal our wounds. After all it would have been counter to Yogi [Bhajan's] purposes had he scared us off or killed us with our first sip of soup. Rather, the poison was administered very gradually and subtly over the years and it was only at the end that I, among others, developed enough discernment to start noticing and naming specific diseased and spoiled vegetables at the bottom of the bowl.