I discuss the role of visualization in magical work and what the advantages and disadvantages of visualization are as well as how to use it effectively in your magical work.
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One of the earliest magical practices I did and still do to this day is something I call walking the land. Walking the land is a practice where you connect with the elemental energies of the land, by walking the land and opening yourself up to the experience of the spirits speaking to you, through the journey you take. I first started doing this when I began practicing magic. I would go for long hikes, alone, and just walk and connect with the land, letting it speak to me.
Many years later, and I still do this practice. I have a small park, near where I live, and I walk it every few days, just to experience the place and the life of the trees, plants, and other beings that live in that park. I also do this whenever I go hiking in the gorge or along the coast. When I do this practice, I do it in silence, my hands outstretched, and I will just quiet my mind, and listen.
I discuss what skills you should learn first when you're just starting to practice magic and why I would pick those skills.
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Book Review: Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Land and Win (Affiliate link) by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
This is a really fascinating book that explores how to apply the strategic and tactical leadership skills of Navy Seals to business. The author shares stories of their time in Iraq and then explains how those same principles apply to business and life. Reading the book and applying the practices to my life and business has already produced some good results because of the discipline that comes with the integration of such practices.
Book Review: Mastery (Affiliate link) by Robert Greene
Mastery explores the stages of development that lead a person to become a master in their chosen discipline. The author uses the lives of various historical figures to illustrate these stages of mastery and then explains how to apply those stages to the development of your craft. While nothing I read here was earth shattering, perhaps because I’m immersed in such a journey myself, it was very helpful to read this book and understand the process of mastery.
Book Review: Enchantments of the Faerie Realm (Affiliate link) by Ted Andrews
This is one of the first books I ever read on magic and I recently decided to re-read it. It’s got some useful and solid information on working with faeries and elementals. I like the exercises the author includes in the book. Some of the book reads more like a dictionary, but if you work the exercises, you’ll get a lot out of it and its a good introduction to working with nature spirits.
One of the books I’m reading right now is The Phenomenon of Life (affiliate link) by Christopher Alexander. It’s a book about the art of building, but its really much more than that. It’s about the appreciation of life and how life shows up in the spaces we navigate and create. One of the concepts the authors talk about is how a given space is defined by its center and how there are actually different centers in a given space that all play off of and define each other.
What this discussion of Center has made me aware of is how in touch I am with my awareness of what my center is, physically, spiritually, and mentally. At the same time, I’m aware that even my perception of the center is governed by how that word is defined. Alexander makes the point that any space is made up of multiple centers. There is no one center so much as many centers and they all combine to shape the experience of a space.
In episode 1 of the Magical Experiments podcast, I interview Astrid the Psychic Witch about the Future of Magic. We discuss the place of tradition in the future of magic, and explore how form can be mistaken for substance and why evolution is a necessary part of any discipline.
To learn more about Astrid visit her website: online-tarot-reader.com/
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8-22-2020 I started reading Beyond Victim Consciousness today. It had been recommended by a friend and given recent events, I felt like it would be useful to take a look and see what might be applicable to myself. My first impression is that some of the perspectives the author shares reminds me of the Adlerian psychology espoused in The Courage to be Disliked, namely that you choose the perception you have as opposed to how trauma defines. I don’t fully agree with that perspective, but I also recognize how much my own trauma can become can excuse, which really isn’t useful, if I’m going to own my choices and the consequences of them. In that sense the perspective I bring to an event defines that event subjectively. And it is all to easy to use a given perception to justify your actions, choices, blamelessness or blame, so I’m really sitting with that. I’ll be curious to see how the rest of this book can inform my journey forward, as well as what I learn from the past.
8-23-2020 I read some more of Beyond Victim Consciousness tonight. Victim consciousness wants to be right, wants to protest, wants to control, wants to make others as we are and when they refuse we become angry and punish them. An internally focused perspective wants peace and accepts the situation as it is, recognizing that the perspective you apply to the situation dictates the experience of the situation.
I always find it interesting when critics of pop culture magic make the arguments that pop culture magic either can’t work or if it does work, the results aren’t as good as other systems of magic. I wonder why they make those criticisms, especially when its clear that for the most part they haven’t actually tried pop culture magic, and therefore don’t have any qualified experience to critique pop culture magic. The conclusion I’ve come to is that such critics attack pop culture magic because they feel threatened by the idea that pop culture magic my supplant their practice of magic. As a result, they feel the need to try and take pop culture magic down.
When I first started writing articles and later my first book Pop Culture Magick, I was on the receiving of similar criticisms. I was told I was reinventing the wheel and that pop culture magic wasn’t real magic. Nevertheless I continued writing articles and books and giving talks on the topic, because I knew there were other people practicing pop culture magic and I also had tangible results from using pop culture magic. And over the years I have heard from people who read my books and articles and told me how they didn’t feel so alone and realized that pop culture magic could be a viable path of magic, one where viable systems of magic could be developed and used.
I discuss why it can be helpful to take a break from your magical practice and share why I took a break recently.
I also share some big news at the end of the video.
Learn how magic works: https://magical-experiments.teachable.com/p/home
Get Free-ebooks: http://www.magicalexperiments.com/free-books
One of the most fascinating aspects of pop culture (and by extension pop culture magic) is how pop culture reinvents and refreshes itself. The most recent example that comes to mind is the show Cobra Kai, which was recently acquired by Netflix. This show takes place 30 years after the Karate Kid movie series and is an update on that series, which focuses on the characters from the first film (initially). I watched the entire series myself recently and like many other people got caught up in the Karate Kid saga again.
There’s two factors that make a given pop culture relevant for people who practice pop culture magic. One factor is the personal relevance you attribute to a given pop culture. People who are die hard fans of a pop culture will be so invested in that pop culture that it won’t matter if it is or isn’t relevant to other people.
I recently blew my life up. I’m not happy about it, but it’s my own fault, and it could’ve been avoided, but sometimes that’s the way things go. Nonetheless, one of the lessons I’ve taken from this recent experience is how important it is to recognize that sometimes internal work isn’t enough, especially when you’re dealing with situations of stress and trauma that you haven’t fully processed.
Meditation and other forms of internal work are good for working through issues, but one of the pitfalls that accompanies any form of internal work is that it is subjective. You may be thinking you’re doing okay because of the work you’re doing, but actually there may be patterns you aren’t seeing or recognizing as problematic. When that happens you can end up sabotaging yourself.
In Walking with Spirits, I share my process for connecting and working with spirits that enables you to get consistent results, while building collaborative relationships with the spirits you work with.
Working with spirits doesn’t have to involve the coercion of spirits that you find in conventional approaches to spirit work. What I share is an alternative approach that enables you to develop a friendly relationship with the spirits you work with and allows you to get results. Instead of trying to force a spirit to do something for you, you’ll learn the following:
How to create a rapport with spirits that allows you to become allies.
Why a co-equal relationship with spirits is better than any other type of relationship you could form.
What the problems are with conventional Western spirit work techniques such as what you find in the grimoires.
How to use experiential embodiment to connect with spirits.
How to use a simplified approach to invocation and evocation that allows you to work with spirits and get results.
If you’re ready to learn a different approach to working with spirits, where you don’t create enemies, and instead have life long relationships where you and the spirits from working with each other, Walking with Spirits will show you a different path for working with spirits that gets you results.
In this video I discuss how to determine the best type of solution for a problem.
Learn how to troubleshoot your magical workings: https://magical-experiments.teachable.com/p/how-to-troubleshoot-your-magic/
Get free e-books: http://www.magicalexperiments.com/free-books
I talk about responsibility and magic
Learn how magic works at: https://magical-experiments.teachable.com/p/home
Get Free books at http://www.magicalexperiments.com/free-books
The other day in the Pop Culture Magick Facebook group I asked the question: “Can you still practice pop culture magic if the pop culture has been cancelled?” I used the recent example of J. K . Rowlings and her comments on the Trans community as an example where someone might practice pop culture magic, but have an issue with what the creator of that pop culture said or did. could that person still work with the pop culture itself.
If you click the link above, you’ll get to see the responses to my question from the community. There were answers all across the spectrum on this issue and I feel like all of them were well considered. But here, I thought I would share my own answers to this question.
7-22-2020 Today when I did my meditation the archangels told me that the next three months is all about an integration of everything I’ve done before with the Sphere of Art, as well as the Qi Gong I’m doing. “That’s more than enough work for you right there, especially with everything else you’ll be doing.” And they told me that all of this would continue to lay the ground work for transformation. So I accepted what they said and just focused on the integration. It is important to make time for the work you’ve done, to ground it and embody it in you and that time, for me, is right now.
7-23-2020 I’m rereading the Slight Edge and he makes an excellent point that changing how you think about what you do matters, because how you think about what you do dictates how you actually do it, and if you even do it. What makes a person successful at whatever they’re doing is the thought that seeds the actions and keeps them doing what needs to be done, even when the person is seeming to fail. It’s a good reminder for me.
Not all spirits have your best interests at heart. Sometimes you’ll encounter hostile spirits and in such a situation you need to figure out what to do about the hostile spirit, because if you don’t do anything, it’s going to make your life miserable. So how do you handle a hostile spirit?
Let’s first consider the reasons a spirit might be hostile. The first reason could be because the spirit is inimical to life. It’s function is about destruction and breaking things down and you happen to be in the way. It’s nothing personal. It just doesn’t want anything to do with you and you happen to be in the way of its function.
How to recognize patterns in your life and how to dissolve them.
Learn how magic works: https://magical-experiments.teachable.com/p/home
Get Free ebooks at http://www.magicalexperiments.com/free-books
I explore the question of whether or not magic can ruin your life and talk about change, internal work, and long term design.
Learn how to apply internal work to your life: https://magical-experiments.teachable.com/p/internal-work/
Get free books at http://www.magicalexperiments.com/free-books
In Walking with Spirits, I share my process for connecting and working with spirits that enables you to get consistent results, while building collaborative relationships with the spirits you work with.
Working with spirits doesn’t have to involve the coercion of spirits that you find in conventional approaches to spirit work. What I share is an alternative approach that enables you to develop a friendly relationship with the spirits you work with and allows you to get results. Instead of trying to force a spirit to do something for you, you’ll learn the following:
How to create a rapport with spirits that allows you to become allies.
Why a co-equal relationship with spirits is better than any other type of relationship you could form.
What the problems are with conventional Western spirit work techniques such as what you find in the grimoires.
How to use experiential embodiment to connect with spirits.
How to use a simplified approach to invocation and evocation that allows you to work with spirits and get results.
If you’re ready to learn a different approach to working with spirits, where you don’t create enemies, and instead have life long relationships where you and the spirits from working with each other, Walking with Spirits will show you a different path for working with spirits that gets you results.
