It is pretty common to scroll Facebook and see posts from forums with people in shock about how they tried a spell, they thought they did it right, and it either didn’t work or events in their life started to go the opposite direction of what they wanted from the the spell. They usually don’t provide enough info to analyze what the problem is. For a lot of people, I think the main thrusts going through their mind are “why is this happening to ME?” and “is something wrong with me?”
Before I get into more of the answer, if you’ve had that experience, there is probably nothing wrong with you. There is certainly nothing innately unworthy about you. These sorts of things happen to everyone, both in the context of magic, and in normal everyday life. Things don’t always go as planned. What we intend to happen doesn’t dictate what happens, because nothing is all about intention. What we do, how we approach what we’re doing, and myriad factors that build the context in which we are doing all factor into how situations blossom into the reality we experience.
Sadly, it’s also common in these forums for responses to be backwards, snarky, foolish and unhelpful. I have said, mostly privately, that it’s ironic and amusing when people criticize some NeoPagans by saying “They went from Protestant to Pagan and all that changed were the letters that come after the P,” because, in all honestly, NeoPaganism is incredibly predicated on Protestantism. It wouldn’t exist in its current form without developing in a Protestant context - but that’s a subject for a book, not something we can delve into in this blog post. The responses from people in forums really show the retention of Protestant spirituality though. “Maybe you didn’t deserve it,” “The Universe has another plan for you,” “Trust Divine Providence,” “Magic isn’t supposed to be used for things like that,” and other various responses that seem to not comprehend at all what magic is.
So, this post is going to show some solidarity with all you mistake makers, spell spoilers, and manifestation missers. First, some quick take aways about mistakes.
Making a mistake is human, it doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with you
You can do everything correctly and things might still not go your way
Intention isn’t everything. Intention characterizes normal actions as magical actions, that’s all. You still need either the right actions and tools, or the right capabilities and connections to make things happen the way you want, and even then, it isn’t 100%. If intention were all that mattered, mistakes wouldn’t be possible.
Waiting on Divine Providence or the whims of the Universe is the opposite of doing magic
Magic isn’t science, or even science we don’t understand yet. Magic has elements we can’t observe or measure, and it impacts things in subtle ways that mean endless factors we can’t assess could impact what we’re doing as well. It can be a tool to rely on, but it will never have the repeatability or transparency of other technology because it is more like poetry or art, every expression is unique and born from the interaction of the magician and the uniqueness of their perspective in the singularity of that moment
Everyone makes mistakes, everyone tries stuff that ends up being a dud…but sometimes, magic still happens even when we think it didn’t, it just didn’t happen the way we expected or wanted.
So, now that we’ve given some basic take aways and reassurances, I’m going to talk about a semi-recent mistake I made. If you’re reading this and don’t know me, I come from a family with threads of magic on both sides. I was introduced to magical things as a small child. I began studying it and practicing it around the age of 11, and dove in intensely around the age of 15. I had a few informal teachers in my teen years and began a formal apprenticeship at 18 that led to “Adepthood” in one system. I took magic oriented classes at university. I was trained in another system where I had Adept status. I trained in a family witch tradition separate from my family. I was in an order where I held a leadership position and was ordained clergy and achieved a decent degree level for a long time. I’ve been actively studying and doing magic for over 30 years. I’ve taught publicly for decades, written books, led public rituals and have had people express awesome results they’ve gotten from those rituals. None of this is shared as a flex. It’s just meant to show that I’m pretty far from a beginner. I’ve had enough success to know magic is real, even at the times when I feel like I should just give up because it doesn’t seem to be working - and those times happen to everyone.
So if you’re a beginner, or you are not a beginner but you haven’t done a bunch of fancy training or done a bunch of stuff out in public and you think you’re mistakes are a reflection of your inexperience…well, they probably are. At least, maybe they are. But that’s ok. Even when you have experience, they’ll happen, and that’s the main point of this post.
That said…my recent mistake story and some reflection.
A couple years ago, I made a set of gris gris bags that each included an astrologically elected Jupiter talisman, a Solomonic pentacle, and the typical ingredients for such a spell.
I had made some astrological talismans before with success. My first one was a pretty effective love charm. Another dissolved some extra bone someone had so he didn’t need surgery. There were a couple other such experiments, but they were all pretty simple and informal. This was my first more formal one, if I recall correctly.
I made about a half-dozen. I kept one for myself, and gave one to my partner so we could see how they worked before I gave out the rest.
Once we both began carrying them, everything either of us did that should have resulted in money was either getting canceled or not resulting in enough business to make money. We both felt like something seemed to be impeding us and that it came on around the time we started carrying the gris gris bags. So we put them away. Eventually, I ritually destroyed the whole batch. Just putting them away helped though, destroying probably helped more.
I was really puzzled as to what caused them to be so bad. I didn't think there was an issue with a malefic in the election. I wasn’t even the one who drew up the election, it was a professional astrological magician who had forecast it.
As I pondered possibilities, I wondered if maybe the Astrological talisman didn't work well with the Solomonic pentacle. I had previously had another incident where two sets of spirits clashed and created calamity because they had not been introduced and harmonized (although in that instance it wasn’t due to my own work.) With as much as talisman makers and pentacle makers seemed to sometimes bicker about the nature of their respective arts and the spirits involved, I began to wonder if the other spirits of the talisman and the pentacle didn’t get along, or if other spirits involved through the other ingredients had a problem with either the talisman or the pentacle or both (this seemed unlikely but worth considering). Gris-gris bags are living things. You nurture a new spirit into life when you make one, and the spirits of the ingredients are co-parents, putting some of themself into the new life you’re conjuring forth. Solomonic pentacles aren’t an unusual ingredient in such confections, so the spirits rebelling didn’t seem super reasonable. Still, I asked a friend who had much more experience with astrological talismans. He also thought that was unlikely.
Eventually, by happenstance, I learned that astrological talismans shouldn't be made in direct sunlight. I had never learned that rule. For whatever reason, I had decided to work outside while I was making these particular talismans. So the Astrological talismans were corrupted. Some would say that the sunlight would simply destroy them as they were being made, and so they would just be inert, but my experience seems to suggest that it was a corrupting influence. Proximity to the sun can mess with things in an election, so it seems reasonable that this could be a negative factor instead of a negating factor. Sometimes bad talismans are weak, sometimes they are powerfully harmful. These weren’t destructive. They didn’t destroy things already in my life. Business efforts just didn’t take root like they should, some got cancelled, some expected revenues evaporated. So, it created a bad effect related to actions the talisman should have been bolstering, but didn’t reach out malefically beyond that, fortunately.
In the end, I was able to resolve it and things improved. I didn’t simply go, “woe is me, I must be unmagical,” or “I suppose the universe doesn’t want me to have good things,” I searched for what I did that could be the cause and I remedied it.
Like we said at the beginning, my point in sharing this story is that even if we know a lot of magic and generally know what we're doing, we can all make mistakes. Sometimes the mistakes are because we're trying something new, or blending things we didn't blend before. Sometimes it's because we just overlooked something or didn't realize the impact a component has. The specifics of what we do matter. There are also things beyond our awareness or control that matter. Because of the latter, it’s all the more important to be as good as we can be with the things was can control.
So, if stuff goes wrong, what is there to do? Even though a mistake doesn’t mean you’re innately flawed or undeserving, it could still reflect something about you. You might need to do an uncrossing or do some cleansings to make sure nothing is attached to you that’s getting in the way. Even if you’re not cursed, it can be a good best practice to keep up with spiritual hygiene because we get exposed to a lot of stuff. We also pull a lot of stuff onto ourselves.
It might not be you, it might be the situation and other competing factors, or it might be a mistake you made in the spell. In fact, even if you needed to cleanse and uncross, these other two elements are more likely causes of error.
Take apart or banish whatever you did to stop the ill effects. Then analyze thoroughly. If you're new, ask for help analyzing it. But be very detailed about what you did. (In my example, when I asked a popular talisman maker if he had thoughts he was at a loss, but I omitted that it was outside around midday that I had made the talismans, without that detail he couldn’t ascertain the problem).
You might also consider doing some general banishing, or banishing things that could be impeding your success. Once you banish, fill that void you’ve created. Invoke success. Invoke magical power. Invoke forces related to what you’re trying to accomplish
Now, put those forces in motion towards your intention. Once you've analyzed it, cleansed and prepared, either try your spell again with corrections, or try a different approach. But don’t give up or doubt yourself or your worthiness to have the things you’re looking for just because something didn’t go your way.
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Excellent.
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