ABSTRACT
The idea of a timeless and invisible holistic matrix, as an originating, 'womb-like' environment for development, presents an alternative metaphorical pattern for understanding how magical consciousness might be understood and examined. This chapter explores Gregory Bateson's work, particularly through his reading of Carl Jung's "Seven Sermons to the Dead", in relation to metaphorical patterns of connection. It then go on to incorporate a study of a non-material dimension to experience through a discussion of neuroscientific and anthropological work on certain Asian methods of writing about "subtle body" processes as a way of coming to understand the ethnographic experience of magical consciousness. Bateson's vision of connecting different forms of knowledge in a pattern of relationships offers a basis for a different theoretical understanding of magical consciousness. Bateson search for an epistemology of living forms in patterns of recursive, non-linear systems; he took the mythical figure of Abraxas as a transpersonal metaphor for biological unity and the mind in nature.
