Imagination is where reality begins. It is the seed of potential and the promise of manifestation and I share why your imagination can be one of your most potent magical tools, as well as how to work it in to your magical practice.
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Recently my magical partner and I visited Portugal. One of the many amazing places we visited was Monsanto, Portugal, which is a village that is built around the natural boulders. The buildings actually incorporate the boulders into the building and the villagers take pride in having a boulder as part of their home or business. I thought that was really fascinating because it struck me that they had made an intentional choice to live with the boulders and make them part of their lives.
When we explored the mountain around the village, my partner and I looked for a place to do some magic. The picture above, of a path between a couple boulders is near where we found such a space, but finding that space required us to listen to the genius of the land, the spirit that inhabits and defines the identity of that mountain. When we first scouted for a place to work magic, we found an area that seemed right and we went back and got our ritual gear, but our search for the right space was just beginning.
Are you applying a long term perspective to your magic and life or are you getting caught up in wanting instantaneous results? I share why its better to cultivate a long term perspective to your magical work and life and also share what can happen when you don’t apply this awareness to your life.
I share why your imagination is one of the most powerful means for connecting with spirits and also explore the cultural baggage around the imagination and how this keeps you from connecting with spirits. I also discuss how to determine if a spirit has connected with you.
Book Review: Daemonic Prosperity Magic by S. Connolly (Affiliate link)
This is an excellent book for wealth magic that walks you through how to apply demonolatry practices toward wealth magic, while also being balanced with practical life and financial advice that truly needs to be applied to manifest wealth. The author presents some excellent spells and workings that you can do. I’ve already started some of the workings and found them to be complementary toward my own ongoing efforts.
Book Review: Ishtar and Ereshkigal by Scott Irvine (affiliate link)
This book ended up being more of a cross culture mythological jaunt than an exploration of Ishtar and Ereshkigal. The author spent a lot of time on other mythologies, trying to connect those mythologies to the myths of Ishtar and Ereshkigal, but it would have been nice if the focus had stayed on the actual topic. He explored the topic some, but a lot of the time the book just didn’t come together the way it could have, if there had been more focus on the actual mythology the book is supposed to be about.
Lately I’ve been doing some experimenting with how to extend the senses in spirit work. This experimentation has come about for a few reasons. I’m taking a course on scrying from Harper Feist, as well as doing more spirit work and because I’m teaching a course on my patreon about working with the psychic senses for the purposes of connecting with spirits. All of these things have been helpful for me, in terms of exploring the kind of spirit work I want to do, but also in terms of exploring how to better apply my sensorial awareness to the spirit work.
In the West, we are used to thinking of the senses in terms of sight, sound, touch, smell, and hearing, but these broad categories don’t encompass the subtleties of our sensorial awareness. These subtleties can be worked with in spirit work to lead us to a deeper connection with the spirits we’re working with. At the same time any sensorial awareness is to some degree subjective because its our senses making us aware of something. At the same time, our senses are limited and there’s a lot we don’t experience which is nonetheless happening around and to us.
In this episode Frater Barrabbas and I discuss elemental magic and talismans and how they work and also discuss how to troubleshoot your magic and work through your failures.
Get Elemental Power for Witches.
Frater Barrabbas (Richmond, VA) is a practicing ritual magician who has studied magick and the occult for over forty years. He is the founder of a magical order called the Order of the Gnostic Star and he is an elder and lineage holder in the Alexandrian tradition of Witchcraft. Visit and learn more at www.FraterBarrabbas.com and fraterbarrabbas.blogspot.com
I discuss how cursing can be a form of healing and why if we look at it from that perspective it can help us reach a state of healthier equilibrium within ourselves because we're not holding onto feelings and experiences that would otherwise traumatize us.
When I recently asked my Facebook group what questions they had about social media magic, because of a book I’m getting ready to write on the topic, it didn’t surprise me that some of the questions I received were skeptical ones that questioned if social media could even be used as a medium for magical work. I understand why that question is asked, because the prevalent image and associations of magic are all based around traditional perspectives of how magic ought to work, with traditional tools that don’t really touch on modern technology and using it for magical purposes.
Yet nonetheless modern technology has been used in conjunction with magic and is being used with magical workings in order to get results, by myself and many other people, because the simple fact is magic isn’t limited to a specific toolset or way of doing things. Those limitations are human imposed and say more about how we limit our understanding of magic and how it can be practiced and what can be done with it. If we recognize the limitation as self-imposed then we can let go of it and start exploring how to adapt social media or anything else toward magical work.
In Walking with Elemental Spirits I share the modern system I’ve developed for working with elemental spirits that gets you consistent results while helping you build collaborative relationships with the elemental spirits.
The elemental spirits can be potent allies to work with and in this book you’ll learn how the practical magic skills that you can use to forge strong relationships with the elemental spirits that allow you to work with them as allies. In this book you will also learn the following:
The classic Hermetic and Taoist systems of the 5 elements, and my modernized system of elemental magic.
How to connect with elemental spirits using evocation portals and experiential embodiment
How to do internal work and health magic with the elemental spirits.
How to work with the elemental spirits to get practical results
and much more!
If you’re ready to learn a new approach to elemental magic, this book will teach you how to work with the elemental spirits and use elemental magic to get results that transform your life.
Sara Mastros and I talk about her magical path and past as well as her books The Big Book of Incense and The Orphic Hymns. We discuss how to work with incense and how the sense of smell can play an important role in magical work as well as discussing how to modify and experiment with existing magic rituals and why some customization of such rituals can be helpful.
Sara Mastros, author of Orphic Hymns Grimoire and Big Book of Magical Incense, is Pittsburgh's leading Witch for Hire. In addition, she teaches tarot, witchcraft, Greek and Near Eastern mythology, Pan-Levantine folk magic, and practical sorcery online and at festivals all over the east coast. You can check in on her courses and lessons at www.WitchLessons.com, sign up for her newsletter at www.MastrosZealot.com, or follow all her witchy shenanigans on facebook at Facebook.com/Sara.Mastros
How Magic Works is where I teach how to take a desire from intent to an actual result, step by step. Start the class →
Not ready to buy anything? Why Your Spells Don't Stick is a free guide to the most common reasons a working stalls, and where to start fixing it.
If you want help with a specific situation, work with me one to one.
In this episode of magical experiments podcast, I discuss the luciferian current with Anima Noira. We discuss spirit work and how to work with Lucifer as well as discussing love spells and magical workings and when one should or shouldn’t employ magic for results driven purpose as well as what its like to do magic for the purposes of internal work.
My magical name has been variously translated as “Breath of Darkness”, “Dark Life Force” “Animating Darkness” or “Dark Fire”. Anima Noira is an occult writer, artist, videographer, and host of the Devil’s Disciples talk show. She has done the Devil’s Work as a model, witch, and priestess. She publishes her essays on the occult on her website, Inner Ignition.
Over the years I’ve created some magical tools for myself. I first started creating magical tools as a teenager, first starting out with creating specific staffs and wands, and then in my early twenties exploring how to meld art and magic together to create magical tools with the paintings I created. However of late, I’ve been inspired to explore the creation of magical tools in further depth. Some of this inspiration has come about because of working with my magical partner, and some of it came about because of a recent interview I did on the Random Illusions podcast and some of it has been inspired by Alison Chicosky’s work on practical occult.
One of the challenges I’ve had with creating magical tools is not feeling like I have the requisite skills to do so, but I realized that’s a mental block on my part so I’ve begun challenging that mental block by considering what magical tools I could actually create. For the moment, I am creating those tools for myself, but I’ll probably make those tools for other people down the line.
Can modern technology and magic mix? I share my own thoughts on how modern technology and magic can mix and why its important to look at how magic and technology can be applied together for effective magical work.
In this episode of Magical Experiments Podcast, I interview Maria Miles about the connection between astrology and alchemy. She shares her background and how she got into astrology and alchemy as well as explaining how astrology can be used in alchemy and magic to get better results with timing.
Maria Miles is an Alchemist, Hermeticist, Witch and Diviner, specializing in Cartomancy and Traditional Astrology. She has been studying these arts collectively for 16 years, beginning as a teenager. What began as a personal endeavor of self discovery has become her primary vocation as a professional astrologer. She has been seeing clients professionally for six years for cartomancy and astrology consults. Her study of alchemy began around age 21 growing into a practice with the instruction of Robert Allen Bartlett. She aims to integrate traditional techniques of astrology and Hermetic philosophy into the lives of modern people, who ask the same questions that humans have always asked.
Maria is an accomplished Sorceress who offers tutelage and advice to those clients with an interest in the occult. Her studies of magic have ranged from traditional witchcraft and folk-cunning to astrological image magic and the crafting of talismans and spagyric elixirs she sometimes has available. All materia magica is limited edition and only available when the stars are right and the proper rites have been observed. She approaches her consultations from a holistic angle aiming to uplift her clients by promoting a mindful consideration of fate. She lives in the Pacific Northwest of the United States where she has lived for more than twenty years.
To learn more about Maria go to rootedstarsastrology.com
I’m currently writing Walking with Elemental Spirits, which is a book that explores my system for elemental magic. One of the central arguments of that book is that the 5 element model of earth, water, fire, air, and quintessence is a bit outdated. It has worked well as a model, but its evident that there are more elements than just the aforementioned elements. Why are we holding onto an outmoded model that was used to describe reality a long time ago, as a taxonomic means of categorizing the experiences of the world? I’ll be bold and just say we hold on to such models because we are taught that something which is old is typically considered better and if it works why change it.
I don’t agree with this sentiment. While I think the 5 element model is a great foundational tool, I also think that when we hold onto an old model and never question it we’re missing out on an opportunity to evolve magically, as well as to evolve the overall discipline of magic. I’ve been practicing elemental magic since I first started practicing magic, and for many years I did rely upon the 5 element model because it was what was available. Yet being the magical experimenter that I am, I inevitably ended up questioning it.
I discuss the principle of invitation and why going to the right level of interaction with a spirit is both a good boundary setting exercise and a way to build more effective relationships with the spirits. I also share some of my own realizations around how I came to this principle.
In this interview Harper Feist shares her experiences with skrying and spirit work. We discuss the different types of skrying people can do and why skrying can be a viable alternative to invocation/evocation, as well as leading up to those practices. We also discuss the nature of spirits.
Harper has a class coming up on Skrying
Harper Feist is a member of the OTO, a past master of Leaping Laughter Lodge, an ordained priestess of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica and the current interviewer of U.S. Grand Lodge’s official podcast, “Thelema Now.”
When you have performed lots of magical workings and created specific types of outcomes, it can helpful to revisit that work. I share a few reasons for revisiting old work and also explain why it can be helpful to revise older workings, or shut them down, if they are still working in the background.
Photo by Will Truettner on Unsplash
How Magic Works is where I teach how to take a desire from intent to an actual result, step by step. Start the class →
Not ready to buy anything? Why Your Spells Don't Stick is a free guide to the most common reasons a working stalls, and where to start fixing it.
If you want help with a specific situation, work with me one to one.
One of the ways that I work with my intuition involves connecting it to the right sense of timing, in terms of taking action on something that I want to manifest. Not all moments are equal and the right timing can make all the difference in terms of manifesting results that allow you to move forward in the directions you want to go in. Bad timing, on the other hand, can hold you back, preventing you from succeeding because you are picking the wrong time to take action.
Some of the ways you can determine the right timing can involve learning about your astrological cycles and using those to help you take action or doing divination to ascertain when you want to take action on a given project. A way that I tap into the timing is also through the aid of spirits that I am working with. For example, there have been several times this last year that Saturn advised me to take action on specific situations. I had done magical workings to call the Saturnic influence into my life and work with it, and given that Saturn plays an integral role in time, it didn’t surprise me when there were some moments where I clearly received a message that NOW was the time to act.
For instance, during my house buying process I looked at a number of houses, but none of them felt quite right. Then I woke up one day and got the message, “Today you’ll find your house.” My magical partner also told me to go buy a house and it felt like she was tapping into that same current. I want out with the realtor and the first house I visited felt right. I put and offer in and by the end of the weekend had it accepted. There were some other facets to that experience, but the timing played a role and my receptivity to the spirits (as well as my partner’s intuition) clearly made me aware that it was time to buy a house. Interestingly enough an astrological reading I received also indicated a time span that would be ideal for me to buy a house and I saw the house on the very first day of that time span, which was the beginning of a saturnic cycle for me.
There are multiple ways to attune your intuition to the right timing. One way that I find helpful involves paying attention to your body rhythms. Your body is often attuned to the subtler aspects of reality around you and will tell you something about the environment around you that you can draw on. If you spend time working with your body consciousness through meditation, qi gong or some other type of activity it can help you start paying attention to the more subtle messages that your body is sending. Intuition is one of those subtle messages and so is timing, so you can combine that awareness of time with intuition to help you determine the best moment to take action.
Take a given situation where you need the right timing. Do some meditation or some qi gong or something else to tune into your bodily awareness and once you are tuned in, bring the situation up and ask your body to notify you of when you should take action. When the time comes you’ll feel a sense of intuitive awareness, a ping on your consciousness that will tell you to take action. It may come in the form of a picture or words or it may just be a sensation. Take action then, because what is happening is you are tuning into the optimal moment that you’ll have the success you want.
These seems like a simplistic approach to take to tuning into the timing of a moment, but you have to keep in mind that you don’t need to make something more complex than it already is. Tapping into your intuition can be an experience where you feel into the awareness you already have available to you and trust that it will help you get what you need.
