Irreplaceable: A Magician's Guide to AI

AI won’t replace you — unless you forget who’s wielding the dagger.

Magicians and creators have many tools. AI is no exception. It is not your rival. It can be your dagger.

The rise of AI has brought creators a quiet, nagging fear, often stemming from a false dichotomy: You either "hustle" with AI to turn into a content factory. Or you fall behind and become obsolete.

Fear and Truth

But are such absolutes accurate? And are they the only options? Well, here's the truth: AI will replace the replaceable. Conversely, AI is a tool. It can either erase our unique voices and skills or empower them incredibly.

A manual for using AI effectively is in the Qabalistic Tree of Life, the ageless map of consciousness, and the central schema of Western Esotericism.

So let's consider two perspectives on navigating it to become irreplaceable.

1. The reflections of the Sephiroth, or the Qabalistic Triangles.

2. The Qabalistic Worlds.

Spheres and Reflections

Art, content, and brands start with an idea. As they say on the Idea Generation podcast: "It all started with one idea." Before ideas, there's only the pure desire to express, which we'll cover in a moment.

Idea Generation

Ideas are generated by humans through Jupiter Chesed, the sphere of creativity and big picture thinking. Chesed reflects in the Hod Mercury, which governs reason and intellect.

Hod's main purpose is to organize Chesed's lofty ideas into actionable plans, blueprints, and goals. This is where AI steps in, helping you find the most efficient ways to turn ideas into results.

Systems and Blueprints

It helps you with daunting tasks. So, you spend more time in Chesed, which is what visionaries and innovators do. And the more you do so, the more fresh ideas you generate.

Henry Ford deliberated about engines alone, but had plenty of assistance for the plans. The same applied to Steve Jobs.

Collaboration

A critical detail is that AI doesn't replace you entirely in Hod. It collaborates, partaking in the organization.

Qabalistically, Hod functions only because of Netzach Venus, which fuels it. Netzach rules passion, artistry, and aesthetics. So, whatever plans and blueprints AI provides are infused by your personal sense of aesthetics and passion, as you prompt those plans and blueprints.

Human Passion

Netzach and Hod are linked by the path of Peh (27), the Tower card, Mars, which destroys obsolete and useless structures. It is how you refine the suggestions of AI by embedding your style and brand's identity in all aspects of your workflow.

Think of Midjourney. It helps us express ideas and a sense of aesthetics through rational instructions: a process embodying the Netzach-Hod dynamic. Now, let's get back one arc higher in the Tree.

Choice and Sacrifice

By providing fresh ideas and perpetual change, Chesed expands and innovates beyond the existing forms of Saturn. Geburah partners with Chesed, preventing overgrowth. More creatively, Geburah (sacrifices) stupid ideas so that better ones emerge and are realized.

AI can help in Geburah, too, yet be cautious. It might eliminate whatever ideas don't fit the bill for "best practices" or "potential virality," and thus make your work common as trash.

Like your initial ideas must be yours, their final "sacrifice," Geburah, also must come from you. Said differently, retain full control of your process in the higher principles of "build and destroy" Chesed and Geburah.

Once the choice is made, AI helps refine, redefine, and even break it down with surgical precision if it is too much for a single project. Mars (Geburah) cuts away the useless, like a surgeon's scalpel.

Qabalistic Worlds

While AI's development moves with the speed of light, it's still in its early stages. It's unable to exercise its own will and desire, which Qabalistically ascribe to Atziluth, the world of Archetypes, and the Life Force (Chiah).

Desire to Express

The collective archetypes emerge from what we call Adam Kadmon, the first being, the very blueprint for humans.

Archetypes can be accessed through psychedelics, art, and rituals, like the Supreme Pentagram, Opening By Watchtower, the Bornless One, and perhaps Liber V on the Thelemic side.

AI can discuss this, but it has no desire to express in and of itself. So we keep Atziluth purely human. It is your god-given desire to express or create something.

To Create What

Remember: "It all starts with one idea."

Qabalah tells us that the life force impregnates the world of Briah, or Ideas Notions, and concepts. In the Tarot, the Knight (King) and the Queen make love, creating the Prince and the Princess.

I found that creatives, especially polymaths, tend to have several ideas floating in Briah, Cups, and Queens.

This is where the Chesed-Geburah action takes place. And to help us ideate and sacrifice optimally, to the rescue comes the wisdom of Viktor Frankl:

"Man constantly makes his choice concerning the mass of his present potentialities; which of these will be condemned to nonbeing and which will be actualized? Which choice will be made an actuality once and forever, an immortal' footprint in the sands of time?' At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence."

— Man's Search for Meaning

Forming to Act

Next is Yetzirah, the formative world, right before the physical actions. It houses the Netzach-Hod dynamic, so it's where AI lends a hand, offering better ways to create our work.

And finally, in Assiah, the world of matter and action.

• Spirits reflect the operator.

• AI reflects the prompt giver.

Neither can make up for a lack of agency. Nothing happens unless you move.

This is Malkuth, the Kingdom, where fingers touch keys, brushes hit canvas, and voices hit record. AI cannot put the reps for your body of work. It can only suggest workouts based on your goals.

You are the one to ground an idea and concepts into physical reality, operating as a magician, between ethereal and actionable, digital and physical. So...

Will You Be Replaced?

Well, many will:

• Some will go hard on "best practices" and become like everyone else.

• Others will fear AI so much that they will be left behind.

Both paths surrender creative sovereignty. But the Tree of Life reminds us that: True creators don't produce. They actualize a unique vision, taking ideas born from their souls and manifesting them using the available tools.

Full Circle

Consciously or not, creators navigate the Tree like a mathematician does a ruler, making the divine law prevail in the Kingdom of the Shadows.

• The divine law is the voice of the god within.

• The kingdom is the physical reality.

Magicians and creators have many tools. AI is no exception. It is not your rival. It can be your dagger.

— POTB