Sometimes you do a magical working and the magic doesn’t seem to work. Why? You’ve gotten all the required resources, done all the steps, but despite doing all of that work the result you wanted didn’t manifest. I share some thoughts on why magic doesn’t always seem to work as well as how to troubleshoot your magical work.
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One of the most important lessons I learned in my magical work is the lesson of consistency, specifically the need to be consistent with a given practice of magic, especially when you’re learning that practice. From the very beginning of my magical practice to now I’ve applied a consistent approach to what I’ve learned in a few different ways. That consistent practice has instilled a level of discipline with me that has helped me become a better practitioner of magic, and helped in other venues of my life, such as with my writing.
When you aren’t consistent with your magical practice it is hard to create a truly sustainable practice, because you’re not giving yourself the benefit of sticking with that practice. Instead when you jump from one magical practice to another you only the barest taste of what that practice can provide you.
So how do you develop a consistent practice of magic?
In this episode Elise Oursa and I discuss how to mediate and work with spirits, how to work with Tarot and the finer pragmatic details of creating change in your life with spells.
Elise's Website is http://www.eliseoursa.com
and her facebook group is: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cardsncoffee
Elise's new tarot deck Blood and Ink will be available for pre-order soon!
When I think about applying practical magic to my life to effect change and get results, there’s usually two purposes that such workings are applied to. The first purpose is to solve a problem that has come up in your life. You need a solution, and magic is a means of obtaining that solution and resolving the problem. The second purpose is that you’re trying to design your life and you’ve decided to apply magic to that life design in order to help you achieve it. I also consider this to be short term vs. long term magical workings.
Should you do magic to find your ideal romantic partner? And if you do love magic should you try and get a specific person to love you or should you take a more generalized approach? I answer these questions and explore the topic of love in general and share my own pragmatic approach to handling love and love magic.
Whether you've done magical work to make change happen or just had some mundane changes come up in your life, its important to make space for those changes to settle and to give yourself a way to fully process the change and consequences that come with those changes.
Lately I’ve been watching the 2004 remake of Battlestar Galatica. I’m really enjoying re-watching the series because of the different themes that are interwoven into the story. Yes there’s the SF theme of space battles, but there’s also the exploration of mystical and spiritual themes, such as some of the characters interacting with spirits. However what really interested me about the show was the Hybrid character that pilots the basestars and how they live in a state of being that can be described as non-linear. When they tell the ship to jump, I think of that as having some potential to be worked with in terms of space/time magic.
12-22-2020 Today I started integrating the Sphere of Art work with the Qi gong work I’m doing. I did the sphere of art ritual and then worked with the alchemical substances for the underworld. Then I did the qi gong work and followed up with meditation, where I also mediated the alchemical substances for the underworld. It was an interesting experience because this time I felt the underworld energies mesh with the qi I had cultivated during the qi gong work. There didn’t seem to be any conflict with the connection of the energies, but of course I’ll test this carefully.
I’ve been reading the 48 laws of Power and what strikes me about this book is that I learned these laws from my dad. I doubt he ever read the book, but so far the laws discussed fit his behavior. He knew how to create an air of mystery, when to keep his mouth shut, but also when to make a scene. He was a cypher and I learned a lot of this from observing him. Of course I’ve also learned some of these laws just from my own experiences, but its fascinating to read this book and recognize my missteps (where I didn’t execute the laws successfully) as well as my successes with those same laws. I’m only part way through the book but it is quite illuminating, especially when you are already putting some of those laws in to action.
In this episode Alison Chicosky talk about her magical work with Greek Papyri and pentacles. We discuss how to experiment and reconstruct ancient magical workings as well as how spirits can help with this kind of work.
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The other day, in the magical experiments Facebook group, a really good question was asked about what people consider a deity to be, versus what a spirit being is. One of the respondents noted that non-physical entities really don’t care about labels attached to them, and that the labels are mainly used for the convenience of humans, as a way of providing context and categorization for them. when working with spirits. The person went on to note that such categorizations are subjective. I agreed with the person’s response to the question, because in a very real sense the categorizations that occur with spirits are rooted in a humanocentric perspective.
A humanocentric perspective is a perspective rooted in the human experience. It brings with it set expectations around how spirits are encountered and worked with. For example, one such expectation is the expectation that a spirit will appear before a person in a form that makes sense to the person and speak in a language that the person understands. Such an expectation is based around the human need to control and label the experiences we have as much as possible.
Have you ever done a magical working and had experiences that went counter to the established goals and progress you were going for in that working?
Today I explain why its important to pay attention to the experiential data and how that data is different from the goals we might establish in magical working. I also discuss how that data can still be used to help us meet our goals in our magical workings.
In this interview Stephanie and I discuss how spirit relationships based on respect and how to work with spirits. We also discuss writing about magic and what goes into writing a book, and how books speak to us.
Learn more about stephanie and her books at http://sjreisner.com
Learn more about Demonolatry at http://www.demonolatry.org
Learn how magic works: https://magical-experiments.teachable.com/p/home
Get free e-books: http://www.magicalexperiments.com/free-books
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One of the questions I get asked is how to create and sustain a consistent meditation practice. It’s a good question to ask, because it can be a challenge to make time to meditate, especially when you’re working a full time job, have kids, and other responsibilities that can eat up your time. And maybe you have none of those things. Maybe your challenge is simply around the act of meditating and you struggle to make any progress with meditating. Regardless of what the reason is, it doesn’t have to be hard to develop a consistent meditation practice.
The first thing that needs to be realized is that there’s no idealized state of being that says your meditating. A lot of people get caught up in the idea that they have to empty their minds in order to successfully meditate. While a state of no-mind is one example of a state of meditation, you can also be meditating in other states of mind. For example, I regularly do Taoist meditation, which among other things includes the dissolving of internal tensions and blockages. Sometimes thoughts and emotions come up during that process and then I’m working through them in meditation. That is still a viable state of meditation.
I explore how to recognize and let go of expectations around results and how to be present with the actual transformations and changes that occur with your magical work.
One of the problems I see occasionally in occult literature and conversation is that a given term will be used to try and describe a wide range of experiences that may not fit that term. For example the term visualization is sometimes used to describe sensory experiences that aren’t visually based. It’s a convenient term because its meant to describe an experience you’re having, but the problem is that the focus on the visual and on the sense of sight influences the understanding of that term.
If I use the word visualization to describe a magical working, what I’m typically describing is an experience where the visual component of the experience takes priority. For example, if I’m doing a pathworking, I might visualize specific imagery that is used to create the environment I’m going to work in. Visualization has become a more prevalent technique, in part, because of visual media and the role it plays in our everyday lives.
One of the perceptions I find fascinating in regards to magical experimentation is the perception that there’s little to no research involved in the choice to experiment with magic. It’s an erroneous perception, but it can be forgiven because most of the time when people think of research in magic, they likely think of it in relationship to the attempt to replicate older magical workings. Certainly that is valid research and a lot of it goes on, when people are trying to either reconstruct older magical workings or learn more about the magic of antiquity.
But magical experimentation involves a fair amount of research as well. The majority of my magical experiments aren’t ones I come up with off the top of my head. They come about because I’ve gotten curious about a topic and decided to do some research in order to answer questions I have. From that research, magical experiments arise because I want to put the research into practical implementation.
Does compassion have a place in magical work? I explore this question and how compassion informs my approach to magical work and how I interact with other people, as well as my internal work.
11-23-2020 One of the skills I’m practicing now, from The Happiness Trap is recognized when I’m hooked on a story I’m telling myself. By recognizing that I’m caught in the story, I can then step back and unhook myself from it and refocus on what really matters. It’s proving helpful in terms of recognizing the internal stories I tell myself and diffusing them. It’s also helping me be more productive again, because I’m not letting those stories dictate my day and take over my energy.
11-25-2020 One of the realizations I’m continuing to work through is the realization around expectations that I impose on myself as well as the ones imposed on me in the fast. I tend to push myself very hard, because that was always the expectation put on me. Over the last few months I’ve been trying to work less and relax more. Today I talked with Kat about some of my fears around the expectations I’ve put on myself and it really helped to unpack those further and acknowledge those are really just stories I’m telling myself that don’t serve me. I can be more productive by actually doing less.
I answer a question I was asked about what the hardest part of magical work is and share the why behind my particular answer. I also discuss why I still think its the most essential aspect of magical work.
A few years ago my partner and I decided to go on a spiritual pilgrimage and explore the Confluence Trail project monuments, which are Native American art installations at parks in Washington and Oregon that call attention to the indigenous tribes and how they were impacted by the Lewis and Clark expedition. While we were on this pilgrimage to learn more about the history of the land we live in, I ended up encountering the spirit of the Columbia river, She Who Watches and since then have had a connection with that spirit that is solely based on a mutual recognition of each other, and in my case a recognition that I am fundamentally rooted to the Columbia river area.
Even before I went on this pilgrimage I felt a connection to the Columbia river. When I first moved to the West coast and traveled through PDX, I felt a sense of connection. I thought initially it was to Portland, but I eventually realized it wasn’t. Within a year I moved down to Portland and while I like living here, I found myself drawn to explore the Columbia valley gorge. There was something about it that drew me in.
