The other day I read a couple of articles on Substack about how magic works. One article made the argument that magick doesn’t actually work like magic (i.e. Hollywood magic) and the other article explored why results de-manifest when you’re not fully able to let the results land in your identity. They were both good articles that laid out some of the problems that people around their magical practice:
Having unrealistic expectations how results
Internal disbelief that magic really works
A subconscious belief that you don’t deserve the result you want.
These are all valid reasons for why a result doesn’t land when you do a magical working. What the reasons really are, though, are symptoms of a deeper narrative around magic and the practitioner that hasn’t been fully explored or understood. Dealing with the symptom can help you in the short term, but it won’t address the long term reality that needs to be changed your relationship with magic.
What is the deeper narrative?
The deeper narrative is the set of beliefs that you have about yourself and magic that tells you what is or isn’t possible. It’s the set point you have within yourself, as well, that creates the relationship pattern you have with:
Money
Success
Love
Opportunity
and other various variables in your life.
The set points that you carry within you create the limits and parameters that you and your magic operate in. If you aren’t aware of those set points and their influence on you, then when you do magical working that takes you outside of those parameters, identity-wise, that part of you will react and bring you back home, because the set point is familiar and feels safe. It may not be serving what you want, but it serves the part of you that doesn’t want to get hurt, rejected or lose everything.
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The 10X problem
Have you ever been given the advice to 10X your goals?
On the surface it seems like good advice. Go big or go home. The reality is that 10x-ing your goals, as appealing as it may sound, actually creates a rebound effect on your results. You go big AND you go home to your set points. The reason is because you’re reaching too far, too quickly, and that causes the result to rebound, if you are not ready to receive the results. It basically is a system shock and when your system is shocked, it fights back and reverts to homeostasis, because that’s what it knows.
Instead of 10xing your goals, trying 2xing your goals. I know it doesn’t as glamorous, but it’s achievable and it has a hidden benefit. It allows you to adjust your set point incrementally without creating resistance to the desired outcome. A 2x goals is something you can achieve with your magic and your life and you’ll adjust to it. And once you achieve the 2x goal, you can move the goal again, 2xing again and again, gradually moving your set point and increasing your overall bandwidth and capacity to receive and integrate the result.
Incremental change isn’t very dramatic, but it is a sure sign that your magic is working and transforming your life. It enables you to trust yourself as well, because every part of you readily accepts and embraces the change as something natural. You become acclimated to the change and it becomes your new set point, transforming the way you experience yourself and the world.
Are there ever exceptions to this rule?
There is an exception to the set point, of a sort. When you are already going through a period of upheaval, such as a tower moment, the usual rules go out the window. Your set points are already disrupted, which makes it easier to manifest and keep results that fall outside the normal capacity and tolerance you have of change. For instance, if you get divorced, the tower of your life is falling apart and so your tolerance of change is greatly increased. You have nothing stable to cling and change is the only way you will get back to any stability.
A tower moment can be a useful experience for doing magic for improbable results, because you have more freedom to turn those results into reality. Your limits are stretched and your set points are open to being recalibrated. You can do magic for improbable results and have it land without the usual resistance and pushback you would otherwise get.
A tower moment is an ideal time to create radical change. If you’ve been wanting to move to a new part of the country or take a risk on a career change and your life is already in a place of upheaval, its the perfect opportunity to take the risk. It’s a calculated risk, because you are using the existing transformation and upheaval to fuel your magic and change your capacity to receive the results.
I don’t recommend this though as a strategy for long term change. In the moment it works. In the long run, it can burn you out. If you want long term success, the incremental approach is best, when paired up with long term/legacy magic. In future posts, I’ll be sharing more about long term/legacy magic and how you can apply it to design your magical life.
Tower Time is officially available!
When the Tower falls, a magician is forged.
You didn’t come to this path to stay safe. You came to wake up.
Tower moments are initiations that tear through your life without warning, but they are not mistakes or punishments. They are thresholds. And every serious practitioner of magic must pass through them.
In Tower Time: Turn Crisis into Catalyst with Practical Magic for Radical Change magicians Taylor Ellwood and Sheena Witter hand you the keys to navigating collapse as a crucible of magical development. This book is a tactical guide for transforming crisis into power, rooted in decades of lived experience, shadow and somatic work, and practical sorcery.
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