How to deal with the dry periods of magical activity

The other day, in Facebook, I commented on a post where the writer was asking what people thought about having periods of time where their magical practice wasn’t very intense or magical. In fact it was just them doing the work and not necessarily seeing anything from it. My response is that its perfectly normal to have experiences like that in your magical work. In fact, when you have such experiences that’s usually when the magic is working in the background, preparing you for more intense spiritual work.

I do a daily magical practice and I can tell you that more often than not my daily practice isn’t all that sensationalistic. I do my meditation and magical work and nothing intense or magical overtly happens at the time, most of the time. Usually those experiences happen later and occur as a result of doing the daily work at a steady pace. What I’m really doing is seeding the garden of my mind with my daily work, preparing the way for the magical work to come through my life…this is especially the case with long term workings, which is what most of my magical work is.

The Spiritual and Practical Ecology of Offerings

In The Spell of the Sensuous, the author shares that when he was visiting Indonesia and learning from some of the Shamans there, he would observe that people would leave offerings outside of their house for the spirits. One day, curious as to what happened with the offerings, the author followed someone, saw them give the offering and then he waited a while. Then he walked over and he saw that ants were carrying off the offerings.

What the author came to realize is that making the offerings had a spiritual impact, but also an ecological one. The ants didn’t show up in the homes where offerings were being made, because the offerings were set far enough away that the ants could get the food and go on their respective way.

Archangels, mediation and cosmology

Over the last year or so I’ve been doing a lot of work with R.J. Stewart’s Sphere of Art ritual. With the Sphere of Art you create a sphere by working with the four elemental archangels. I’ve modified the SOA working to include three additional archangels, one for the underworld, one for the cosmos, and one to tie it altogether. This modification hasn’t been done lightly, but rather has occurred as a result of a careful reading of both the Sphere of Art and works by William G. Gray who references the other three archangels extensively.

Why spirits work with us

I’ve lately been pondering the question of why spirits work with us, prompted in part by reading a book where the author claims that angels have no choice but to do what we ask them to do. I don’t agree with that perspective and my experiences with Angels, and for that matter other spirits, doesn’t fall in line this approach. It also seems pretty thankless for any spirit to work us because they have to. But I recognize as well that I’m making a human assumption about the motivation of beings that is likely not accurate.

Elemental Balancing Ritual Creativity Month 6

3-24-2019 I had a realization today about my passive aggressive behavior. When I am passive aggressive its because I’m in a situation where I don’t feel like I’m in control. The passive aggression is a way to try and get that control back or undermine it for the other person. When I trace this behavior to its origins, I find it goes back to my childhood because I wasn’t allowed to express my feelings of anger or anything else along those lines without getting punished.

Having this realization is helping me look at situations where I don’t feel like I have control and helping me see how that behavior is coming out. And its helping me realize I do have a choice. I can choose how I express my feelings. I can choose to be passive aggressive or I can choose to be direct, even in situations where I may not feel I have control.

How to draw on multiple sources of energy for your magical workings

Energy.jpg

One of the questions that recently came up in the magical experiments Facebook Group was if its possible to draw on multiple sources of energy, instead of using your own for magical workings. The short, flippant answer is yes, but I want to share in detail what this really looks like, because this is an approach to magic that I specialize in.

In my approach to magical workings, one of the questions I ask myself is how best to fuel my magical workings. I’ve rarely taken the approach of using my own energy, because a person’s energy is limited ultimately, and I’d rather focus that energy on my health and well-being. So when I consider the fuel for the magical working, what I look is how the magical working can be tied into existing efforts and actions already being taken. The reason is because those actions and efforts involve some energy, so why not harness what you’re doing and turn it into metaphysical fuel as well.

For example, if you’re looking for a job, take the effort you put into filling out applications, sending in resumes, and interviewing and make it into fuel for whatever workings you’re doing. What this lets you do is take what you’re already doing and turn it into a potent source of fuel for your working that also helps you accomplish your result.

Emotions are another source of energy that are often underutilized. You are already feeling the emotion, so why not take feeling and use it to charge your working? I’ve applied emotions to my own magical workings, in situations where the emotions would otherwise get in the way. By providing my emotions an outlet through the magical working, I’m not letting them become an obsession that blocks me from achieving a result. Instead I’m turning them into a source of energy that benefits the working and keeps me from fixating on the situation I’m applying the magic to.

Of course, in both examples above, you might note that I’m still, to some degree drawing on my own energy. But what you should also be noted is that what I’m actually drawing on is the expression of that energy. In other words, the energy is being directed somewhere. I’m just choosing to optimize it so that it really does two things instead of one.

That said, there are still other sources of energy that we can draw on. A person’s attention is one such source. even the act of casually paying attention is an expenditure of effort on the part of the person paying attention and this can be taken and applied to magical workings. I call this attention stacking, because you take the attention someone provides you and redirect it toward a magical working, to fuel that working.

Then there’s the case of harnessing other sources of energy for your magical purposes, such as elemental and planetary energies. In such cases you can draw on these energies or work with a spirit that can mediate those energies for you. I have set up specific magical tools that I use for the purposes of channeling such energies, and I apply those tools as needed. Such tools can be talismans that a person has created, or an active tool that you might use like a wand or an athame.

My magical workings are set up so that they draw on multiple sources of energy. I may setup the initial working and charge it with expressed energy, such as emotions, then draw on relevant external sources of energy that can also help empower the working. By using multiple sources to empower the magic working, I effectively keep it charged until its realization…and even after because I set my workings up to be retroactively charged even after the fact. That’s my approach to using multiple sources of energy for my magical workings. What’s yours?


Explore related entries in the Library

How I evaluate my magical workings

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about results and magic and how a person goes about evaluating magical work. The obvious answer is that you look at whether or not you’ve gotten the result, and certainly that is helpful, but what I’ve been realizing about results is that too often we stop short at the result itself and fail to examine the ramifications and consequences of achieving or not achieving the result. The focus is just on the result itself, but not what comes after.

I’ve observed before that one of the tendencies I see in magical workings is a tendency to treat the desired result as the end itself. What’s problematic about that approach is that the result rarely is the itself. Instead the result is typically something just another means to the actual end, but we’ve ignored the actual end to focus on the result, because on the surface the achievement of the result seems to resolve the problem. I got the result and the problem is solved…but is it?

The Place of Ecstasy in Magic

I was recently reading Stealing Fire, which is a book that explores states of ecstasy and how people are harnessing those states deliberately. If I have one complaint about the book its that they never really touch on ecstasy shows up in magical practices, but it got me to thinking about the place of ecstasy in magic and why ecstatic states of being are so important to magical work.

I’d argue that any altered state of consciousness can be lumped under ecstasy of some sort because what seems to be a defining characteristic of ecstasy is an the experience of altered consciousness. And ecstasy of some type seems to be essential to magical practices, because what ecstasy necessarily provides us is the suspension of the everyday conscious mind with its attendant disbelief. I think of an ecstatic state as a state where your perception of possibilities and reality is intertwined, where your awareness of past, present and future combines to create a singular moment where you are, and you can connect a desired possibility and provide it a path toward manifestation. An ecstatic state of consciousness is a state of flow.

Elemental Balancing Ritual Creativity Month 5

2-22-2019 I finished reading The Courage to be Disliked Today. I found it really insightful because it talked about work and about the intrinsic reward of contributing to your community, regardless of whether you are recognized or not. What the authors shared resonates with me deeply, because as I’ve continued to shift away from seeking recognition to doing the work, I’ve felt a deeper connection to my community and a deeper satisfaction about the work I am doing with that community. Doing the work and being in the moment is what matters. Anything else is a distraction. Realizing that has helped me shift my awareness around creativity, my work, and my sense of self-worth in a positive direction.

2-23-2019 Even if with all the work I’ve done around recognition and realizing that being recognized isn’t necessarily as good for me as I’d have thought at one time, there are still moments where it hits me hard that I’m in the background now. When I see a local event happen, with presenters, and no one’s asked me to present, it hits hard. I felt that way today and at one time it would’ve hit much harder, but for the moment I just feel a sense of loss because I realize I’m not being asked to present, and I likely won’t ever be again. Yet I am finding my way around that. I am connecting to my community, having dialogue with the people that need my work and contributing something. Have I really lost anything if I can continue to contribute and make a difference? I think the answer is I haven’t. Yes, may never present at conferences again because I chose to speak up about problems I saw, but I am still connecting with my community, still writing, still making videos, still doing something. That won’t ever stop. So I acknowledge this desire to be recognized and I let it go. I don’t have to be out there. I simply need to do my work and let it speak and find the people that need it.

An example of how Retroactive Magic works

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

I thought I would share a practical example of how retroactive magic works. This example pertains to the recent move I made at the end of 2018. In 2018 my family and I lived in a duplex. I had lived there for a decade and most of the time it was a pleasant living experience, but we had new neighbors move in in 2018 and they were the kind of neighbors who were loud and unpleasant to be around, and seemed to lack any awareness of how their actions were impacting our sleep or overall quality of life.

The question I had to consider was what could be done. On the one hand, I liked living in the place and had a lot of good memories. On the other hand, my land lord was powerless to do anything, even when issues were pointed out that demonstrated that the neighbors weren’t honoring the agreement of their lease. The laws around evictions favor the tenants even in cases where its clear the tenants are not honoring the agreement that’s been made. When it became clear the neighbors weren’t going to be evicted I began to consider what else I could about this situation.

In late November I mentioned to my wife that I thought it was time we considered moving. She agreed and mentioned that she had been feeling that way for a little why because of the neighbors and because of a couple other issues. I decided to look up our lease and was pleased to see we only had until the end of January until the lease was up. Clearly it was time to start looking for a new home. So we started looking but experienced a bit of sticker shock when we saw how much rent had risen. We had been fortunate to be at a place where the landlord didn’t obscenely raise the rent and we did debate whether we should just try and stick it out, but after doing some financial research, realized we could afford the higher rent.

So we started looking for a new home. We initially found one right away that seemed perfect, but ended up not working out when we realized they didn’t like pets. And as we kept looking we discovered how hard it was to find a home that would allow us to have more than 2 cats. And when we did find one that might work it was much further out from my work and the landlord lived next door. It was clear to us that we need to start doing some magic that would help us get a better result.

Why not do magic right away? We initially wanted to get a feel for what was available and I think it was good we did. By doing our research we were able to figure out the specific criteria about what we wanted as well as what we didn’t want, in a home. Price was obviously part of the criteria, but we also needed a place that would allow us to have more than two cats, and didn’t charge pet rent. We also wanted a place that didn’t share a wall with anyone else and we wanted a place that was centrally located, yet also quiet and isolated enough that we could enjoy our privacy.

So the night we decided not to go for the one place, I pulled out my two tarot decks and did a reading/enchantment for us that would help us figure out the best choice to make and point us in the right direction of the home we wanted to find. Part of what went into that reading was all the previous efforts we’d made to look for a home. We didn’t want to waste that effort, but instead took the energy of it and applied it toward the reading/enchantment so that we could get a result that was ideal for us. What the reading indicated was that settling for the one home wasn’t ideal and that staying where we were also wasn’t a good idea. But it also indicated we’d find a new home if we kept looking. After the reading wrapped up, my wife got an intuition, checked a site we were using to find potential homes, and lo and behold we found the place we’re now living. It was ideal and although there were a couple details that needed to be ironed out, we knew it was the place we were looking for.

Within the week we secured the place and at the same time I contacted my previous landlord and was able to make an arrangement with him that got us out of our old lease a bit early without paying a full month’s rent and being able to transition the utilities to his name. Everything else lined up smoothly and by the end of December we were in our new home. And the new home has met our criteria. We don’t share a wall with a neighbor, we have quiet neighbors and our home is secluded and yet has access to everything we want access to. The commute to our respective workplaces is shorter and the energy of the place, overall size, etc fits what we need for where we are. And we could rent it with all four of our cats.

Where does Retroactive magic come into this?

I applied retroactive magic the night I did the tarot reading. I used the tarot reading as a medium through which to work magic that was focused on helping us achieve several specific outcomes.

1. Assess our current situation and the possible outcomes available to us, as well as environmental information we may not have been aware of. This was the divination aspect of the reading and it helped us get a better lay of the land, while also allowing us to look back at the previous work we’d done to find a new place and put it into context with what the reading was telling us.

2. Take the information and experiences, and create a new path forward that would direct us to the place we were fated to live in. I treat my tarot readings as enchantments, so once the cards were laid out and we eliminated the possible paths to focus on the one path that indicated what we needed to do, I used the reading to grab the experiences of the previous month, the emotions we felt about leaving and about our annoying neighbors, and I took all of that and turned it into momentum for creating a result in the present or near future that would get us what we wanted.

This is where the retroactive magic came into play. I couldn’t change the past and what happened, but I could use the past to open up opportunities in our present/future that weren’t readily apparent to us. I could take everything up to that present moment, the experiences and emotions we felt and turn it into raw magical energy that could take a probability and create a path of manifestation for its realization. And that’s what I did.

The result…we got our new home, got out of the old place sooner than later, without having to cover utilities for the last month and only paying a half’s month rent. Everything lined up to help us get where we needed to go. We just needed to use what had already happened to propel us toward where we wanted to go, and to help us achieve the desired result we wanted.

Explore related entries in the Library

Book Reviews Jan through March 2019

Book Review: The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard

This is a whimsical book which explores the poetics of space, of the home, and the environment. It asks you to redefine your awareness of spaces you take for granted and provides appreciation and perspective about what space is really about. What I liked is how the author combined poetry, philosophy and design to create this treatise and its one I'll return to from time to time to help me appreciate my own space anew.

Book Review: Processmind by Arnold Mindell

In this book the author explores how to connect with the environment through meditation and internal work. This is a fascinating book which examines not only how we relate to the human body, but also to the environment through our body, both natural and manmade. It provides some useful exercises that can help you implement the practices described in the book. Worth reading if you want to develop a deeper connection with reality.

Book Review: The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

This is a must read book which will transform your relationship with yourself and your community. This book has helped me examine my relationship with myself as a writer and artist, but also as a person and the lessons its provided me have helped me become more confident and focused on doing the work instead of worrying about things I can’t control. It’s a relatively quick read with a socratic dialogue, but take some time to ponder and meditate on what is shared.

Book Review: Zero to One by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters

This is a fascinating, must read book on startups that applies to any business. The principles in this book will help you start a business or change an existing one. Most importantly what this book teaches you is how to focus on making your business successful, without falling into the trap of competition. Instead you learn why its important to do your own thing well and with a plan.

Book Review: Stealing Fire by Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal

This is a fascinating overview of the ways people are exploring ecstatic practices in modern times. I don’t feel its comprehensive as there’s areas the authors haven’t explored but its a good book, which can give you some food for thought about how altered states of consciousness can be applied to your life to increase your innovativeness and productivity. What it also reveals is the importance of altered states of consciousness for helping us achieve breakthroughs.

Book Review: White Moon on the Mountain Peak by Damo Mitchell

This is an excellent book which explores the alchemical firing process of Nei Gong and how it works. It’s not a book for beginners, and it requires that you already have some experiences with Taoist meditation practices. I read this book and clearly understood some of it, and some of it I realized I needed to go back and get some more experience. The author does present the information clearly, but its important that you have the requisite experience to fully implement and comprehend this book.

How learning Guitar is teaching me about sound and time magic

This past Christmas I received a guitar as a gift, along with online lessons for learning guitar. I had expressed an interest in someday learning the guitar, and my partner decided that it might make a good gift. And she was right! It has been a wonderful gift and opportunity to learn guitar and a gentle reminder to turn someday into something concrete.

I am slowly but surely getting better at playing guitar. I’m finding that what helps me get better is more than just the practice itself (though that definitely helps!); It is the choice to employ the mansion of memory technique which helps me remember what strings to pluck and what frets to touch while I play, as well as working my muscle memory into the playing so that I teach my hands how to get comfortable with the guitar. That, in and of itself, has been a novel experiment in terms of exercising the natural capacities of the body to myself learn something new.

Inner Alchemy of Life is now available

Inner_Alchemy_of_Life_small.jpg

Inner Alchemy of Life is a guide to the life within your body and teaches you how to spiritually connect and work with that life. Taylor Ellwood shares the practical magic techniques he developed for bio-hacking your body and working with neurotransmitters and microbial life of the body as spiritual allies that can help you enhance your health and overall quality of life.In this book you'll learn real magic techniques including:

  • How to create your own alphabet of desire to work with the spirits of the body.

  • How to use meditation to change the biochemistry of your body.

  • How to improve your body's health by working with the spirits of the body.

  • How to make life style changes using neurotransmitters.

Inner Alchemy of Life allows you to access the sacred mysteries of your body and develop a conscious and alchemical relationship with the life that exists within you and makes your own life possible. Transform your connection with your body with the Inner Alchemy of Life.

The Pop Culture Magic System of Kingdom Hearts

I’m currently playing Kingdom Hearts 3, which just came out, and when I play this series I always end up learning more about the pop culture and it gets me thinking about how it can be adapted to a pop culture magic system. What fascinates me about Kingdom Hearts is that it’s an amalgamation of Disney mythology, classical mythology, and the mythology of Kingdom Hearts itself. The series manages to make all of this work together and ends up creating an interesting cosmos that can be worked with. In my previous post, I shared a bit about why I might work with it, but in this post I want to break Kingdom Hearts down and explore the overall system in terms of what can be done with it.

Elemental Balancing Ritual Creativity Month 4

1-22-2019 Last night I started working with the Affinities. This work felt like I was supercharging myself and the elevations and adding further correspondences that would help me go deeper if I’m doing work with the Tree of Life or even as a way of drawing on those specific resources for ritual work. In a very real sense it feels like what I’m creating are batteries I can draw on when needed, but also guides that can help me take my spiritual work further.

1-24-2019 I’ve been continuing to work with the affinities and what I notice is that they do seem to supercharge the elevation even further while also creating a resonance effect within me, tuning the internal elevation further. I’m not sure what the end process will be but I do feel a stronger connection to the Archangels as well as to the elements, cosmos and underworld, so I’m willing to keep working at it and seeing where it takes me.

How to pick your pop culture for pop culture magic

I’ve recently started playing a game called in Inquisitor-Martyr, set in the Warhammer 40k universe, which a is a dystopic universe where humanity has access to advanced technology, but also a medieval mindset about technology. At the same time, humanity is beset by various alien menaces and the forces of chaos. I enjoy the game, but I would never create a pop culture magic working or system based off the Warhammer universe.

In this article, I want to share some thoughts on how to pick your pop culture for pop culture magic and also demonstrate why a viable option for pop culture magic may not be ideal, for other reasons. At the same time I’m going to compare and contrast the 40k universe with that of Kingdom Hearts (for purposes of pop culture magic), which is on the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to pop culture based off fantasy.

How Marrow Breathing, Neurotransmitters and Qi gong healed my ribs

On New Years Eve I fell in my shower, and I ended up bruising my ribs. I fortunately didn’t break or fracture them, but even bruising them was painful and for the first couple of weeks it hurt to pretty much do anything. It typically can take up to 6 weeks for bruised ribs to heal and I knew as a result that I was going to have to take a break from my usual exercise routines and just focus on letting my body heal. But I also figured there was no reason I couldn’t also help my body with that process of healing.

How Embodiment connects you to your environment

The majority of my current magical experimentation is on experiential embodiment, which is focused on entering into a conscious relationship with the body, as opposed to merely inhabiting it and treating it as an object. Yet what I’m finding with this work is that it’s not merely helping me continue to collaborate with my body as a living universe in its own right, but also connecting me more intimately with the environment and world I live in, as well as with the fellow living beings I share this space with.

I’m reading the Spell of the Sensuous and Processmind and both books explore how connecting with your body also opens you up to connect with your environment. What both authors recognize is that the choice to be sensually and experientially present with your body necessarily also opens you up to becoming present with the space you are interacting with in your everyday life. Embodiment teaches us not to take for granted the world we live in or the bodies we are fortunate enough to have access to.

How to untangle Jealousy from Creativity

I’ve been reading The Courage to be Disliked and one of the ways this book has been helping me involves how I look at creativity and jealousy. When I look at my own experience as a writer and magician I can point to moments where I have felt jealous and have reacted to that feeling in ways which really hasn’t helped my spiritual practice or my writing. But jealousy is all too easy to feel and respond to.

2018, for me, has been this huge process of coming face to face with the things in my life that serve to destabilize my work, productivity and overall life quality. And since I switched over to creativity as my element to work with that too has brought me face to face the issues that have haunted me.