Success Stories

When I was a kid, it felt cool to me when I would get messages from people about how they were working some ritual or an idea from an essay I'd written into their practice. In my early twenties, the cool thing was to hear about results people had from public conjuration rituals I would lead. I've had a new cool variant of that this week.

I don't do a lot with taking students, and I don't sell classes like a lot of other magicians. Currently the only thing I'm doing is the occasional blog post and slowly rebuilding my blog...and slowly working on some writing projects. Sometimes answering questions for people. I rarely teach public classes anymore because I just don't have much time. But I'm hoping to do some more of those soon, and hopefully finish some of those writing projects, and speed up the website and increase the blog posts...and...well...lots of other things I'd like to get done. Sometimes not getting your own stuff done isn't so bad when you get to see your work help others. This has been something that has come up in my life as a fencing coach, no longer being a competitor my successes are now found in seeing the successes of my students...who are way more successful than I was anyway. It's not quite the same with magic, but it's cool getting to hear success stories.

During this passed week I've had two friends reach out and tell me really cool stories about successes they've had with early experiments with spirit conjuration after having read the Beginning Conjuration series here on Glory of the Stars, and other posts about my early conjuration experiences. One friend worked with a spirit from a group of spirits with whom I've done some work and he got a lot of very similar stuff communicated to him in ways that sounded very similar to the ways they were communicated to me (I have neither posted about nor told him about those experiences with those spirits as of yet). Another worked with spirits described in the conjuration series and got some cool esoteric responses that fit with stories I've heard from other people, and then she had some practical success with a spirit I had conjured early in my conjuration career.

I'm not going into any details, because I didn't ask if I can retell their stories. But, it was super cool getting to hear them. Actually a bit more cool than hearing about people getting stuff they wanted from rituals I was doing. It's cool seeing other people successfully doing magic, and getting to know I helped with that. Jason Miller does Field Report posts where he recounts success stories from his students. I get it a little more now why he does that. It's not just showing how cool his classes are, it's really cool getting to see how your work is helping someone else. More so though, talking about people's magical successes inspires other people to do magic, especially people who are on the fence waiting to try it out. I think it's even more powerful when people see stories from people who aren't teachers, or who don't have an image of being a magician who is successful. When people hear Jason, or Rufus, or JSK did some cool magic with cool results, they expect it and maybe don't interpret it as something they can do to. But hearing someone trying out magic experimented with something cool they'd read about and had success might inspire people to try things and accept that maybe they can do magic too.

So with that in mind, I'd like to run the occasional success story. So if you read something on my blog, and you try it out, or if a post inspires an idea and you experiment based on it, please send me your tales of success. Or if you have questions as you're prepping to try something, reach out with your questions...and then share your successes. I'd love to post some occasionally.