I think the conventional image that people must have of a magical experimenter is someone running around with crazy hair, doing all kinds of off the wall magical workings, which may or may not be grounded in conventional magical theory and practice. I can understand if that’s the image that comes to mind, but the reality of magical experimentation is that it is a careful process, grounded in the experiences of the magician and the work they have done up to the point of experimentation.
When it can be useful to go old school with your magic work
Way back, when I first started practicing magic I used to have a sword, an athame, a rod, a chalice, and candles and incense, and other various tools that people typically use with magical work. Over the years I drifted away from using such tools, taking a minimalistic approach to my magical work, or coming up with my own tools, based on unique needs I had. However of late I’ve been going back to an old school with my magical work and I’m finding it to be refreshing to do, because its like coming back to an old friend you haven’t seen in a while and picking the relationship right back up.
Magical Experiments Podcast: Creating Magical Art with Helena Domenic
In this episode of Magical Experiments Podcast, I interview Helena Domenic about her work as a magical artist. We discuss how she's created books with illuminated art and explore the intersection between creativity, art and magic. Helena Domenic is an accomplished artist, writer, witch, and professor of art history and studio art. Helena maintains a studio in Phoenixville, PA under the name, The Artistic Mystic, where she offers classes, workshops, and readings. Helena spent thirty years as a member of the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel and was also an Elder in that tradition. She left to carve out her own path, both as an artist and a witch. Currently, she leads the Exton Pagan Meetup and the Brandywine Kindred, a newly formed coven in Chester County.
Helena has a forthcoming book called An Illuminated Guide to Wicca, available from Schiffer Publishing (available for pre-order now) in January 2022.
Helena has also created a Tarot deck and book, The Fellowship of the Fool Tarot, as well as a Runic Oracle deck and a Lenormand deck.
Helena’s work may also be seen on her website: http:www.artofhelenadomenic.com
Why I work with more than 5 elements
I discuss why I work with more than five elements in my elemental magic and share an example of working with the element of movement in order to release blockages and create opportunity.
The role of separation in magical work
Are you the magic you work? Are you the experiences you have? Are you the clothes you wear or the car you drive? Before I go all Tyler Durden on you here, the reason I’m asking these questions is because of something I read in the book Creating (Affiliate link), where he discussed the necessity of being able to separate yourself from your work, relationships, experiences, etc. It really struck me, because there is something to be said for overly identifying with something.
In magical work this over identification is framed as a lust for results, but it could also be framed as an obsessive fixation on something. You hold on too tight to an identity and the result is that you don’t actually get what you want, because you’re too caught up in the identity instead of knowing when to separate yourself out from it. You let it define you, instead of seeing it for what is. the only way to free yourself from fixation is to recognize it for what it is and separate yourself from it.
Should you call someone into your life?
Should you call someone into your life? I weigh the pros and cons of evoking people into your life and share some of my experiences with this kind of work.
An alternative approach to working with spirits
I answer a couple questions about spirit work and present my alternative to spirit work and explain how I came up with it and why I came up with it, as an alternative to the traditional humanocentric models of working with spirits.
The Role of Uniqueness in Magical Workings
Image courtesy of pexels
A magical working is unique. That may seem like an odd claim to make, but recently I was reading The Process of Life (affiliate link) and the author made a very interesting point(s). He makes the point that all order and from is derived from repetition and shares examples ranging from galaxies to atoms to demonstrate how repetition plays a role the formation of various structures. This organized repetition is found in all forms. We see it in nature and we see it in our own efforts. Yet the author makes the point that if a process is a living process this changes the nature of the repetition. There may be repetition, but within the repetition is context which changes structure of each atom and particle.
The author goes on to explain that a living process creates a geometrical order in which every part is whole, unified, but also unique, according to the conditions that part brings to the geometrical structure. What creates this uniqueness is life itself. Life is not the same. It may be similar, but it brings variation and that variation plays a role in the process that utilizes repetition but also draws on the uniqueness inherent within life.
What does any of this have to do with magic?
Magic is also a process, as I have shared elsewhere. It’s a living process. There is certainly some repetition that can be found in the techniques and rituals a person works, but what the person/people as well as the magic itself brings to those techniques and rituals is a sense of life that brings uniqueness with it. This is worth appreciating because what is brought to a process is what allows that process to work.
It may seem a bit of a stretch to explore how books on architecture could influence magical workings, but it is in such perspectives that we get a different look at what we are doing and a result gain some awareness that can help us with our magical work. For instance, when I design a magical working, one of the questions I now ask myself is what is most important about that working. It’s not always the result. Sometimes its something else and so from that awareness I’ll build the working out, allowing it to naturally unfold around what is most important. Would I have thought this way before about designing a magical working? Probably not, which is why its good to take on fresh perspectives that change your understanding of magic, or for that matter any other discipline you explore.
Can pop culture spirits die?
One of the questions I ask is whether or not pop culture spirits can die, especially when they die within a story and it becomes part of the canon of the story. Are the pop culture spirits because the character is dead in the story and can you still work with them? In this video I share my thoughts on these questions.
A Writing Magic Exercise
My latest post on Patreon explores how to apply magic to the process of writing.
I'm a firm believer that magic can be done by incorporating creative activities into your magical work. It's one reason I like to do paintings for both practical magic and spiritual offerings. Another practice I enjoy doing involves incorporating writing into my magical work.
Magical Experiments Podcast: Experimenting with Magical Mechanics with Rich Kiska
In this episode Rich Kiska and I discuss experimenting with the mechanics of magic. Rich shares her spiritual journey and how she became a magical experimenter and then we discuss space/time magic, pop culture magic, and how to experiment with magic in general.
Rich Kiska offers spiritual services and works with The Emotion Code which involves divination through channeling and muscle response testing; astrology; identification and removal of energetic/spiritual blocks, contracts, curses, and demons, to name a few. Learn more here
How to work through ancestral blockages
Once you identify ancestral blockages you need to work through them and let them go so you don’t continue to perpetuate the ancestral blockages, but also do you can let your ancestors rest. I share some ideas on how to do this and let your ancestors and you move on.
Magical workings as an unfolding process of wholeness
One of the latest sources of inspiration in my magical work is a series of books by Christopher Alexander where he explores how to create life through architecture (affiliate link). While these books admittedly, on the surface, have little to do with esoteric secrets for summoning spirits or the other types of occult lore that is usually so favored by occultists, I nonetheless find them to be quite inspiring because of how they look at the process of creating a building where people feel a sense of life. There is something profound about a discipline that explores how to bring life to the process of building.
And I find that it carries over to magical work, provided one is willing to explore the possibilities and perspectives that are offered. I’m only a bit over halfway through the second book of the series, but nonetheless I have discovered a profound amount of insight and knowledge that be applied to both space/time magic in specific and magic as a discipline in general.
How to Identify Ancestral Blockages
Sometimes the blockages that we deal with are ancestral. In this video I share how to identify an ancestral blockage and start dissolving and working through it so that it no longer haunts your life and breaks the cycle that is inherited from your ancestors.
Elemental Balancing Ritual Connection and Truth Month 12
9-21-2021 Today I’ll be switching over to Ouranos (Uranus). This morning my magical partner and I collected dew from the bottles and afterwards we talked about partnerships and feasts and I note this only because it happened while we were collecting and distilling the dew for the archaeus work and since such conversations are happening its worth noting as a relevant and related to the energy and efforts of the work we are doing.
I meditated on plate 12 of The Mutus Liber. It’s almost the same as plate 9 though there are subtle differences. I didn’t get any specific insights beyond what I’ve already gotten, but I noticed the triangle shape again and the offering to Mercury.
Also I did switch over to Ouranos (Uranus)/Metatron and felt a sense of welcome. Last year, the creativity work was ended in such a weird way, because of events. It felt like this month is actually a redemption tour of sorts and I got the cover of my newest book today, so that felt significant as well.
Magical Experiments Podcast: Balancing the Magic with the Mundane, with Soviet Mercedes
Soviet Mercedes and I get together and have a fun conversation around the importance of balancing your magical work with mundane activities. We discuss why it can be good to take a break from your magical practice and how that can help you create a baseline for your magical work, as well as sharing examples from our own experiences about how we’ve balanced the magic with the mundane.
How to balance what you want with having enough
Knowing what you want and following through on what you want must be balanced with knowing what your enough looks like. I share the pitfalls that can happen when you don’t recognize what is enough and share why its so important to build a strong foundation around what you’ve manifested in your life.
How to figure out what you want
When you know what you want, you can manifest it. But figuring out what you want isn’t always easy and there can be a lot of distractions along the way that lure you from what you want. You have to apply the discipline of essentialism to keep you focused on what matters, but you also need to explore what you might want to narrow down what truly matters and then focus on pursuing it. In this video I share my thoughts around this process and what I’ve learned over the years.
Lucid Dreaming patreon post
This month’s patreon post is all about lucid dreaming and how to do it.
I was recently asked by one of my patrons about how one could do lucid dreaming. This month's Patreon article is all about lucid dreaming and how to do it and use it in your magical practice.
What is Lucid Dreaming?
Lucid Dreaming is an altered state of consciousness you cultivate that allows you to become conscious within your dreams, but can also be used to cultivate an altered state of awareness in waking life.
Learning how to do leads to why
I was recently watching a qi gong training video and the instructor made a really interesting point: Learning How to Do leads to why. The point he was making is that if you want to know the why behind an activity you are doing, you first must necessarily learn how to do the activity. It’s a salient point to make and one often missed when people get caught up in trying to understand the why, without doing anything experiential first.
I will, on occasion, have people ask me questions about a given practice, which is very reasonable to do, but at a certain point the answer becomes, “Do the work,” if the work hasn’t already been done. The reason is simple: A conceptual framework of the actual work can only take you so far. Until you apply the concepts into actual practice, you don’t know the concepts. Theory without practice can only take you so far, especially if theory becomes a crutch that keeps you away from the practice.
I apply this to my own practice by making the choice to do qi gong everyday. Learning the practice allows me to experientially open myself to the concepts and turn them into felt experiences that shape my understanding of the concepts. Each movement I perform and learn leads me deeper into the mysteries I’m exploring, allowing me to discover how to deepen my practice but also illustrating the why behind the practice.
Learning how to do something will naturally create more questions, but it will also answer a lot of your questions. The new questions can lead you deeper into the practice, and while the insights someone else offers can be valuable, the real work begins when you answer your own questions through the engagement in your practice and discover the why through the embodiment of your practice. The whys’ you discover will lead you on to richer and deeper insights, providing clarity and focus around the work.
