Sometimes what stands out to me about why someone is having problems with their magical work is that the person is complicating the magical work. It likely doesn’t help that in your average book on magic you find tons of information about magical tools, herbs, crystals, and candles that you are supposed to have in order to do magic. Throw in a magical grimoire and now you need to get golden tablets, and various other arcane tools that the author assures you is absolutely essential to doing the magical working.
Let me assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. And if you come away reading a book that suggests you use a specific tool or do a specific activity, but it’s not clear why you should do it, then you need to back up and liberally douse that book with a bar of salt before doing the working.
The reason why people complicate magic is because there’s a tendency to take whatever is presented and treat it as the final word on the subject. But here’s a little secret for you: You are the ultimate authority of your spiritual practice and you don’t have to do magic the way people tell you to do it.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t read books on magic or try the exercises, spells, or whatever else, but if you find it isn’t working, it’s okay to try something different or take the working apart and figure out what part of the process doesn’t actually make sense. To this day, I do this with much every practice I read about. I try it, figure out what makes sense and get rid of the rest. And the practice consistently works without the unnecessary information.
So how do I simplify my magical work?
I’ve already explained that if you don’t know why you’re doing something or what the purpose of something is, it can be useful to consider discarding it, but let’s explore 5 other ways you can simplify your magical work.
via GIPHY
1. Design your own tools. Magical tools have a place in magical workings, but it can be helpful to design your own tools. There’s nothing saying you have to use an Athame, wand, or whatever else. They can be useful tools, provided you understand their purpose, but what if you need a specialized tool?
For example I created a memory box, a specialized magical tool for the purpose of helping me do space/time magical work. No conventional tool would have worked, but the memory box helped me connect with past memories and future possibilities, providing a model I could work with. By designing my own tool, based on my needs, I was able to simplify the magic and get more from the workings.
2. Develop your own list of correspondences. Lots of magic books come with correspondence charts. The purpose of a correspondence is to help you understand how a crystal, plant, etc. is connected to a specific spiritual power. However there’s nothing saying you can’t come up with your own correspondence list, based on your own experiences. In fact, developing you won correspondence list allows you to personalize your understanding of the spirits and forces you’re working with, which simplifies your magic because you aren’t having to remember someone else’s correspondences.
3. Take a critical look at the ritual you want to do. When I learn any given magical technique, I like to take a critical look at it and ask myself what each part of that technique or ritual is supposed to do. This helps me determine what I do and don’t understand about the technique or ritual. And then I can either do further research or cut out what doesn’t make sense and see what happens. Either way by taking a critical look at the technique or ritual I’m simplifying the magic because I’m taking time to figure out what I know and what may need to be modified.
4. Take out elements of a working that are optional. Sometimes you’ll discover that a magical working has optional elements. Well optional for you anyway. The person who put together the original working might disagree and say everything is required, but in my experience you can likely get the same result doing a stripped down version of the working. You can always do the full version of a ritual and then strip out what you consider is optional and see if there is a difference.
For example a meditation technique I was learning had a lot of visualization in it. Trying to remember all the visualization became a real distraction from learning the technique, so I stripped the visualization out and focused on the sound and tactile sensations. As a result I was able to hit some very deep spaces of altered consciousness that were consistent with what the defined outcome of the meditation is. By simplifying the technique and getting rid of what I felt was optional, I was able to focus on what was essential for learning the technique.
5. Use your talents in your magical work. We all have our own talents. I think it’s a good idea to apply your talents to your magical work. For instance, I use my creativity in my magical work, in the form of paintings and writing, collage art and song. By taking what I’m good at and applying it to magic, I am able to develop my own processes and practices. I simplify the magic by using my talents to connect with it.
One of the ways I’ve simplified my magic work is to create paintings that are evocation portals. The paintings contain the sigils of the entities I’m working with and when I need to evoke one of the entities, I can simply use the painting to connect with the spirit and call it forth.
If you want to learn even more about about how to simplify your magic, check out my 5 secrets for personalizing your magic that gets you consistent results.
Did you miss an episode of Magical Experiments podcast in January? All of them are here, for you to listen to, plus a book review.
