The truly magical man is not in touch with reality; or rather, with none except his own, the inner reality he wishes to manifest. (To convert from the Imaginal to the Actual.) There is a sense in which he lives only in his own head; depending on the level of magical force upon which can draw, he may be said to be trapped there. If young, energetic and keenly alchemical, the charge flows; snaking from one objective to the next towards a vanishing point of progressive exaltation. But if his will falters, and the charge stagnates, the sense of incarceration in a world of fantasy may increase to a point where it is obvious not only to the failed magician... but to his peers.

His experience, at this point, is one in which the divide between his projections and his circumstances has assumed gaping proportions. Depending upon the nature of these projections, and his willingness (or ability) to discard or modify them, the difference may amount to a form of psychosis, temporary or permanent. Unable to reconcile his inner world with the outer, yet still possessed by the former to the latter's exclusion, this state approximates those induced deliberately in victims of mind control. (Project Monarch being the best-known example.) Implanted by a programmer, the forms are then 'animated' through hypnosis; and reinforced, where necessary, with recourse to certain tailor-made environments. (The original function, it is claimed, of theme parks like Disneyland.)

It is interesting that much of the artwork favoured by the recently deceased Michael Jackson evokes images of inner worlds... An expression of his own deep immersion in a pseudo-reality from which- whether as a result of failed alchemy, or programming systematically applied- there was to be no escape.