Manage your Creditors with Some Magic

I recently had a disagreement with a lender regarding a debt that I had paid. If I had not been able to resolve it it was going to cost me about $1700. A few people told me that I should just be prepared to be out money, as having been in similar circumstances they found the same bank to be unwilling to correct their errors. I resolved to be confident and self assured that I would succeed in forcing them to fix things. I also determined that some angelic intercession was probably a good idea, as my first attempt to fix it without magic had resulted in a promise of a solution but with nothing having come of it. Instead of pulling out all the gear, and doing a large Solomonic working, I grabbed a 4^th Century Jewish magic book said some angel names, spoke an incantation, and viola, shit got fixed.

So, for anyone who might be having issues with a debt, here is something to try:

According to the Sefer Ha-Razim, the angels of the second encampment of the first Heaven, called Shamayim, are angels of anger and wrath. They will provide death and torment and torture...so...apparently, one calls them to resolve any number of issues they might have with those set against them.

They are ruled by TYGRH

Their names are thus:

KSTR MRSWM BRKYB KMSW

STYB KRYTEL DYR GB

QRB NBWR KBYR TYLH

BRYTWR TRTM NTPYEL PRYEL

TRWHWN SLHBYN SLB MSTWB

GRHT HGR YTMYEL HGL

LGH MNYTYEL TNYMEL YKRYT

BRYT RKYLEL HSTK PPTS

STYRWP WDYEL SBYR MLKYEL

RWS DSWW HMK TRGH

ZMBWT HSNYPLPT SWW SPWR

RQ QNWMYEL NHYEL GDYEL

DQ YMWMYEL PRWG DHGYEL

DGRYEL GRYEL RWNWR DWNRNY

DLKT TBL TLYEL LYEL

MWTR LPYEL PYTPR LPWM

WR TMR DLYL STWRYN

ZWTY YSTWRTY DWBYT BRGMY

DMWMYEL DYGR BYBEL PRWTYEL

QWMYEL DGWGR DLGYEL PDWTYEL

I called upon the name of TYGRH and then each of his angels and followed it with the incantation:

HHGRYT who dwell in the east, SRWKYT who dwell in the north, WLPH who dwell in the west, KRDY who dwell in the south, I call upon TYGRH.

In the name of TYGRH and of the Lord of Hosts to whom you answer I call upon you angels of the first heaven that you will plug his mouth and make his planning in vain and he will not think of me nor speak of me and when I pass in front of him he will not see me.

The original instructions involve a more violent incantation, but this is still distilled from the original. The original also would have you collect seven jars of spring water on the seventh day of the month in the seventh hour of the day, from seven separate springs, and leave them sit in starlight for seven months.

I didn't find any of that to be necessary. But then, maybe my task was easy for the angels so they didn't need the pomp. Hopefully your task will be easy for them too.

So, try calling on some angels and to help you with clearing your debt and let me know how it goes.

The Magic of Listening

Sometimes magic is about listening. We typically enter into magic with the idea of telling the world how we want things to be. Sometimes we go in telling spirits what we want to know. Or we explore divination for answers about what we're wondering about, even if it's just a general “what's up with me?” But we are rarely open to just listening without desire and moving with the inspiration, that, however, is incredibly important to be able to do.

As a boy the first magic I learned from my father was simply this. He taught me signs in nature to be aware of certain things that were going to happen. Not to look for them, but just to be aware enough to see them when they were there.

When I was older my teacher in traditional craft gave me my first lesson by telling me to take several opportunities to just sit somewhere and observe and take in the world around me. Again, super important, and just a generally good feeling thing to do.

In other areas of life we're often impressed by the idea of a natural awareness to the flow of things and the ability to act based on its inspiration. We talk about being present, we talk about mindfulness, and about truly experiencing those things in which we are engaged. This is important too, and is suited to the idea about which I'm speaking, but that mindfulness can accompany actions where we have a desired end.

Sometimes we just need to reach out and touch the magical forces of the world, and be mindful, present, and listen without any thought or idea about what we're looking for. Then sometimes we need to do, sometimes we need to just keep listening, sometimes we need to bask in the inspiration of the force we're touching.

The world is awesome, not in the sense that we're all pretty nifty, which, we are, but awesome, in the sense of a thing filled with awe inspiring glory. That glory and awe can lead us to a lot of answers we need, even when we don't know the question to ask, if we're open to it. It can develop our subtle bodies and instill in us completion, strength, and powers in a deeper sense than just reaching out and asking for something.

I was reminded of all this tonight with a pretty simple act. Opening myself up, gazing at the sky, and chanting. Not for any purpose but connection, and with a sense of “I should do this, but I don't really have a plan of where I'm going.” It became super clear very fast, I knew what I needed, I got what I needed, and I was granted a vision of the beauty of a star filled sky, despite it being a relatively starless night. All in all, pretty nifty, but even more, pretty useful. Hopefully you find some use in it too.

Hangovers: An Ethical Model

Everyone is hung over. Work party was pretty intense yesterday. But despite headaches and stomach aches and dizziness and exhaustion everyone is here, ready to work. So that's good. While people jokingly asked me if they could call out, no one did, they all recognized that if you go out and party on a weeknight, as we'll be doing on Thursdays now, that you knuckle up and drag your hungover ass into work with the poise and fortitude to get the job done.

That's an issue in our society. We want rights, but people don't want responsibilities. We want freedom, but we don't always want to accept that wielding the two edged sword has consequences. Some times we run into the converse, where people recognize the responsibility of freedom  but don't want the responsibility so they surrender their freedom in various ways.

Liber Tzaddi verse 9 says "All that ye do is right if so be that ye enjoy it"

A pretty permissive morality there. If it feels good, do it. That, however, is not generally the idea of Thelema, or magic in general. On a basic level it is distinguishing the divine initiatory force from the divine law givers of other religions. Push a little deeper, take your thumb and stroke back the outer petals, and you'll note that the larger context is about enjoyment, or the idea of love and joy and pleasure as a means of elevation and transcendence.

So if this is not a statement of ethics, and it does not fit the moral complexion of Thelema or magic,what does, and what's it have to do with hangovers?

Well, the Book Of the Law says that your only right is to do your will. If you just do that no one has the right to say "Hey Dude, quit it" with any real force of authority. Your will is of course a vector, based on nature and the purposes implied by that nature in relation to its context. So it's not simply whatever whim feels good. The Book of The Law also dismisses the waffling equivocation of debating an action by saying "Success is thy proof" suggesting that we judge our actions by their results.

I think if we begin to take these ideas together we come close to a general guideline for the magician. When I was young I watched an interview with a Zen monk. He explained that in his tradition Karma is explained as the eternal energy that exists as a result of our actions. Everything we do continues into eternity through the impacts our actions have on what follows them. With that in mind we can consider his further explanation that right action is based on whether or not the results are good and successful. Actions which are right have amenable results, actions which are wrong either fail or have negative results.

So let's circle back to the various pieces we've touched on. We have enjoyment, will, success, and consequence. These can all tie together fairly well.

In most mystical systems those actions suited to our will are also those actions and lifestyle choices with which we will have the most success. If we are succeeding the consequences should be amenable, and we will therefore enjoy ourselves, right? Maybe, hopefully, simplicity is nice. Tis a gift to be simple.

Let's go back to enjoy as one of our root concepts. Enjoy, while almost always having a connotation of pleasure can to some degree be used to mean something experienced or endured. It can also refer to really dwelling in a sensation to try and explore its best parts. When taken this way enjoy plays pretty deeply into will. Not only does enjoyment imply transcendence through ekstasis but also the exploration of will. If we enjoy our actions and their enduring consequences in that we commit to experiencing them and drawing from them the fullness of sensation (experience) we deepen the exploration of our nature, direction, and context. Consequence becomes important not simply as an expression of how are actions are enduring expressions of ourselves but in that we must experience our interrelation with our environment and therefore know ourselves and our context.

Consequence and success take a clearer relation to the question of moral implication. The relationship to enjoyment is largely one of our own personal development, but we do reside in a context which is at least in part social. Our actions impact others and theirs impact us. Thus that symbiosis of self and context becomes more dynamic due to the ever shifting juxtapositions of our actions with those of others.

Morality typically creates rules which force us to behave amenably and in a socially constructed fashion, but these rules are sometimes arbitrary and even in cases where they make sense, they are not always universally applicable. All in all they are meant to govern the lowest common denominator.

Sometimes we have metaphysical sticks and carrots like Heaven and Hell or the NeoWiccan Threefold law. Other times we get more high minded and talk about virtue. We don't often talk about success and consequence as models of right and wrong in the west, except in an ends/means kind of way, which is a little different though similar.

If successful actions with amenable consequences are right, how do we fit that both to our model of experience and our social model? Amenable consequences are more likely to please those around you and create a more enjoyable world for yourself, both by the direct result being pleasing and by the indirect result, or the actions of others, having a higher probability for being socially adaptive or pleasing. This is the same basic impetus behind our socially driven moral legalism, but we can still engage in actions which are right because they are successful and result in a positive consequence even if they do not fit a proscribed moral code. At times an action may be right in that it is successful and it may be positive in that it has a positive individual consequence but a negative social context or a negative individual context but positive social context initially, but the indirect consequences may be positive and therefore worth the initial discomfort.

Our Hangover example, going out and enjoying life with friends has positive personal and social impacts both immediately and over time. Having a hangover is a negative consequence. Continuing into work has positive consequences, and if the hangover can be overcome through personal fortitude or other reasonable means the negative consequence is mitigated, and perhaps even is experienced such as to express something to make the individual more adaptive in the future.

Conventional wisdom would say going out and getting drunk on a weeknight is bad, but there is no absolute moral bench mark, nor an absolute social imperative, nor shared cultural norm to support this and our success/consequence/enjoyment model proves it a right action.

So let's look back at enjoyment. Mystical fervor is similar to the experience of elation. Therefore the application of visceral joy and pleasure can be useful in mysticism. If life is always in the crapper it's harder to focus on the mystical and it's harder to experience elation let alone commit to experiencing it in its fullest (enjoying it). When we engage in prudent actions, or those which bring greater enjoyment to life and improve social position and socially adaptive behavior it becomes easier to enjoy life. Therefore our criteria of actions based in will, and actions which are enjoyed become easier.

Now this is not to say you should pander to social whims or change yourself to fit in. But it does highlight that a true magician owns his experience. He lives within his decisions and experiences the on set of their eternity. You must not only avoid pandering but you must practice judgment. It is left to you to make your decisions and to deal with the consequences. You need to know yourself and know therefore what consequences will be OK with you and which ones will develop you better, and you must know your world to anticipate how it will respond to your actions.

A large part of the apparently prophetic wisdom of many of our archetypal wizard characters from story and myth is really just the application of this kind of thinking. Understanding yourself, your world, your actions, your fellow man's actions all of these factors go into a magician's analysis. 

So yeah, my team was pretty banged up at work today, but not one issue arose. Let's make our magic just as able to roll with the punches.

Unprotected Night Time Adventures

So, last night I had some questions I wanted answered. Sort of along the lines of issues related to mercy and severity.

I determined I needed some insight from the spirit world, but I wanted a general kind of view, from positive and negative spirits, a broad perspective.

A few months back I was having some really intense dreams where I was being challenged by malevolent spirits and was having to exorcise them. The dreams were much too real and were somewhat inexplicable. I took a rosary sealed with St Benedict's seal and tied it to my bed. St Benedict is the patron St of exorcists and he repels witchcraft and black magic. In general I assume Benedict is intended to be used against all magic, but I find his talismans useful to have around as a magician.

The dreams stopped right away. A couple other nocturnal disturbances got sorted too. It was good. Although positive spirit communication in dreams reduced too. Which I didn't really notice until I opened stuff up.

So, feeling the need to talk with spirits I opened up the door by taking down the rosary and put out kind of an open invitation. This is generally viewed as a bad idea. You usually want to know who you're inviting in and make sure to keep others out.

A lot of people would also feel like opening dreams is risky because you're inviting spirits into your mind. This isn't usually the case. Dreams typically do take place in your head. Even lucid dreaming is mostly a psychology thing. But some dreams take place between the world of spirits and your mind. You meet in the middle, so there is still a buffer. If you pay attention you'll notice a different feel to the environment in magical and spirit communication dreams than in normal ones, this is why. Not the same environment.

Aside from the buffer I was kind of in the mood to dive deep into whatever and felt comfortable with my ability to handle whatever came to visit. In fact the worrisome guys were more of who I wanted to hear from.

They were apparently not worried about talking to me though as all I got were angels. A bunch of them.

It was kind of like they put on a moral play in which I had an open ended role so my choices could answer my questions. It was pretty angelic in its somewhat indirect and melodramatic didactism.

I woke a bunch of times and always fell back into continuing the narrative. This usually doesn't happen for me.

In the end I guess the angels expressed their view, and tried to do so in a way to make me feel like it was my own.

To a degree they made me feel the draw towards Mercy and Providence...by convincing me to flog an angelic prince with fire...

Like a Virgin, Evoking for the Very First Time - a Recollection of Conjuring in 2007

I was planning on doing a post about this sometime in the near future, but with some discussion tonight about the idea of methods of evocation, results, and visible appearance, I guess I'll do it now.

When I was a kid I really wanted to learn to conjure spirits. I'd gotten good at other forms of magic, but, mostly coming at it from a NeoPagan Witchcraft angle at first, no one talked about that. As I got more into traditional Paganism and traditional witchcraft, and began studying ceremonial magic and hermetic Kabbalah I still wasn't really finding anything on it. People would direct me to things like the LBRP, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted. Eventually I downloaded copies of the Keys of Solomon, and started exploring a few grimoires. Early on I saw enough of them to realize that there were several different methods.

I started exploring more deeply into ceremonial magic and the Kabbalah and began working with my teacher, and made friends with some people who while they weren't the super traditional and semi-academic grimoiric magicians of today, they were pretty hefty into demonology and a few basic grimoires along with some other modern magic. So I started to develop a view of the grimoiric system, and what I needed to do to develop myself towards safely and successfully using it. I frequently debated with friends who were also studying but hadn't tried the systems in the grimoires how strictly we needed to follow them. My view was that it was like a radio receiver. You could make a workable one with a few basic parts, but adding more pieces of better quality made a significantly more effective one.

So, as I continued my development and got to the point in my training where methods of conjuration started to be on the table I had a lot of options and a lot of view on what I should and should not be doing. I started out with some stuff based in GD influenced stuff, looked at some Levi and Crowley based ideas, and after a couple years of playing with those things decided to try something more directly grimoiric.

I worked with Mathers' edition of the Greater Key. This was 2007 and it was just before I began collecting all the Golden Horde stuff. I had a privately published edition of the Lemegeton as well as the Mathers, a few books on Grimoiric magic, and a couple other grimoires and grimoire based books. The Greater Key seemed like the most straight forward starting place. Oddly, Trithemius' material was my favorite, but there was stuff I wanted to do to prepare for it first, mostly in terms of tools which is ironic since it's one of the most low impact systems in regards to tools. But I also felt like doing more thorough evocations first would set up the relationship with the spirits to allow for me to work the Trithemian system. In any case, that was all nonsense, if you want to get started, draw some spirits into some crystals.

But I did not do that, I did the Greater Key. I had my white robe, worn by a priest celebrating Mass (not a GKOS thing), I had my magic sword, instead of a crown I had Abramelin oil, I had my censers of incense, and I had my seal and some candles. I also had the magic circle painted onto a sheet to lay out beneath me, and my bible opened up to psalms. I was ready to go.

I decided to work with Bariel, a spirit of Jupiter, and request bunches and bunches of money. I was used to working in a Mercurial milieu so I wanted to win money. That didn't happen, but I got really good results all the same.

I began with some ritual cleansing, did a bit from the GKOS, then the Headless Invocation, and then more GKOS material. The ritual over all was about 8 or 9 pages.

At the time I'd been out of college for about a year and a half, and so I was, as most millenials do, living at home. I had five burners of incense going. I'm conjurng like a madman when suddenly I hear a voice from above...

“BJ!”

I pause, I think, “Oh shit, Lisiewski made it sound like you'd basically die or at least never be able to do magic if your conjuration gets interrupted midstream, what horrors await!”

I respond: “Yes, Mom?”

Mom: “BJ, put out that incense, you know I don't like incense, what're you even doing?”

BJ: “Nothing mom, it's ok, don't worry about it, sure thing.”

She goes away, and I think “what do you do now? Finish like a beast I guess.”

So I finished my conjuration. I definitely felt the presence of the spirit, now, 8 years later, I still very vividly remember it, but the whole time I was thinking “No, I got interrupted, it very clearly feels like the spirit is here, the space even seems sort of ripply and charged with presence over in that direction over there where it feels like he is, but this is clearly BS, I got interrupted, Lisiewski said there would be no success, only horrors would await me now.”

I guess I didn't mention I'd also read that book the Power of Ceremonial Evocation as part of my final preparations.

So I told Bariel what I wanted, polished everything off and wiped up, and moved along certain I'd failed despite everything seeming successful.

I didn't win any money. Instead, I had much more Jupiterian results. Which was good, since in addition to asking to win money, I'd asked for financial stability and a promotion and raise and for things to just have a general financial fecundity.

So within a couple weeks I had been told at work that while they couldn't promote me right away, because our staffing compliment didn't include a second person in the position they wanted to move me to, that I would get a smaller promotion and a bonus. They'd also be giving me a raise to max me out for what was my current job grade...and they were working on adjusting the staffing compliment to promote me. At this point I'd been in my role for about a year, and had been trained for the job to which I wanted to be promoted for about 8 months, but there were no openings anywhere. Within a couple of weeks, I interviewed for the position at two other locations, was told that if I waited awhile longer they'd probably fire someone at a third location and give me his spot, and in the end I was given the job at a fourth location with no interview or anything, I just got a call offering it and all I had to do was say I wanted it. My managers gave me my year end performance increase, and then gave me the increase for the promotion afterwards so that I ended up with a higher salary than they told me I would.

All in all within the period of about a month, I achieved a 33% increase in my income in addition to an extra $500 bonus, and being told that I had been short listed for the next round of management school.

During this same time, I was expecting to have to give my mom some money for things, which she ended up telling me I didn't have to do because my parents discovered they were paid ahead on a bunch of stuff and the addition they were putting on their house was way cheaper than expected.

A couple months later I ended up conjuring Bariel again using the same method, and I told him I wanted a new job with a salary that was about an 18% increase above where I was with better duties. Within a couple weeks I got a call inviting me to apply for a job which would include training and licenses that I wanted but couldn't get at my then current company. I ended up taking the new job, and while the initial offer was only about 9% above where I was I ended up making about 26% more in the first year than I did at the previous job, getting training which has led to a job that was originally intended as an interim thing becoming a career and giving me a fair amount of stability.

So, I would say those first to evocations were unquestionable successes.

Neither one had what I envision when the bad asses of magic describe evocation to visible appearance. Neither one was a hundred percent a pure execution of the material described in the grimoire. It was a faithful execution of the system described in the grimoire definitely. It was a workable execution, and it was a successful execution.

In posting this, my point is two fold pretty much...maybe three or four fold, we'll see as I type.

1. Your execution can have mistakes and still work

2. You can create a ritual based in the grimoires which earnestly follows the system without slavishly following the book

3. You can get results without a lot of the crazy claims people get intense about, just stay chill and do what makes sense

4. You don't need perfect or beautiful tools or even everything that's there. Study a bunch of grimoires, look for what consistently seems important use that.

5. Get off your butt and do it, because magic is awesome, you're awesome, and results are real...especially when the spirits are not just imaginary friends.

I should also note that this was before I achieved K&C, so it was not an instance of the spirits being super anxious to help me because I was an adept. I was a Dominius Liminis, or more accurately within the A.'.A.'. system an Adeptus Minor Without (preparing for K&C but not having done it yet). So, while some methods of evocation are better suited to people who've done K&C, if you are properly prepared to do the work you can still do the work prior to that. But stick with angels and spirits under the sway of angels in that case, and with systems that involve invoking grace first.

And On That Note...How do we know our magic is MAGIC?

So, yesterday we talked about how you're stronger when you're really you, and so if being you is being a magician then you need to actually be a magician and do actual magic. So what does that mean?

When discussing this issue the other day the person complaining about people not doing magic was mostly complaining about people not doing ritual. Of course there is magic which doesn't involve ritual, and there is ritual that doesn't involve magic. Now, when I pointed out that even people who do ritual are not always people who do magic, the person originally complaining asked, despite a clear lack of desire for an answer, how one would determine that a ritualist is not necessarily a magician.

So let's take a look at a few elements to keep in mind. Hopefully for those who are looking to develop their magical practice, these thoughts might help with developing more powerful, effective, and meaningful rituals.

1. Magic is by it's nature goal oriented.

In general a big part of developing into a more useful person for me was learning to understand the importance of being goal oriented. In college I took a class called “The Psychology of Motivation” it was an upper level neurology class and the professor had a reputation for being amazing but also incredibly difficult. The material was riveting in general, but the most interesting part was how well the teacher drove home the point at all motivation is goal oriented. It made me realize the importance of understanding clearly what a goal is and how to move towards it in terms of understanding our motivations and those of others, and therefore understanding the underlying elements of a situation. This is a huge part of being a magician. We have to be able to look at the world and see through the bull shit down to the truth of a thing. We have to be able to pull apart the puzzle and see the strings which form the maze. We have to know what will happen when we pull on a particular string and what will pull back on it from each end. Understanding goals is a big part of this. Understanding goals, and what is necessary to reach them is also hugely important to success.

From the perspective of a magician, understanding our goals and how to achieve them is part of how we decide what magic to do in what way. Understanding that magic requires a goal is an important part to distinguishing our magic from playing dress up.

Magic is about willed change.

Crowley defined magic as “the art and science of causing change in conformity with will” there is a bit of an implication towards the mystical elements of changing things based on one's true will when we quote Crowley. Personally I like to take it more generally “Magic is the process of causing change through the manipulation of subtle and unseen forces.” The will part is less obvious, but manipulate implies that we are determining the change created by these forces. In either case, we make a decision about what we want to have happen, and we make it happen.

So if we're doing ritual and it's not supposed to do anything, or we don't know what it's supposed to do we probably aren't doing magic.

2. So...being goal oriented, means we want the goal to happen

Years ago I was at a coffee house near a college. It was run by local NeoPagans and they used to do Pagan Band Jams. Sometimes the OTO would go hang out and meet people.

I once met a young man there who was clearly very concerned about his 1980s punk rock chaos magician image. He told me all about how he liked reading chaos magic books, he was wearing his chaos star t-shirt, and he told me about how he didn't believe in magic but sometimes liked to do rituals when people pissed him off so he could feel better by pretending to curse them. I said I preferred to spend my time doing things that accomplished stuff.

To me it seems silly intentionally doing something that we don't think will accomplish anything, but, I guess in his case it was accomplishing a sort of catharsis or distraction. This behavior isn't just a chaos magic thing, there are people who dress up as witches, druids, thelemites, wizards, whatever because they feel better doing so and doing rituals even though they only look for them to make them feel better. It makes sense, as a lot of writers stick to magic as kind of an in home self help ritualized psychology. Arguably this is a goal, feeling better, and there is a change, you feel better than you did. But putting on a warm blanket, or eating ice cream, or thinking happy thoughts can do the same thing. I wouldn't really consider this a change in the sense of magic.

When we're looking at changes sometimes they might be things which aren't clearly perceptible, but they're still things where there is a meaningful and significant difference. For instance rituals or practices which develop and strengthen the subtle body of the magician, or which expand awareness or psychic capabilities, or even revealing knowledge can all be magic. We're working internally in these cases, but they result in clear applicable changes at are more than us just deciding to smile.

Changes quite often can be external perceptible elements of reality. There is a clear presence in the magical community of people trying to downplay real external change because it's easier to look acceptable and not crazy, but, magic, throughout history, has always primarily been about creating a world we want. Looking through the grimoires we see rituals for gaining treasure, procuring favor, gaining love, taking love away, defeating enemies, tons of stuff. All of it is stuff that is beyond our ability to achieve it just by deciding that we want it, but it's all also stuff that can be the object of a clearly defined goal.

3. Magical practices should involve means of making the goal happen

If you want to hit a baseball, you probably need to swing a bat. Conversely, just because you're swinging a bat, doesn't mean you're hitting a baseball. You need the right tool applied in the right way at the right moment to the right thing in order to achieve your goal.

If a ritual or practice does not engage in any means of applying change it can't accomplish change and isn't magic. Now, a ritual which has no means of effecting change, or which applies the wrong means, or the right means incorrectly doesn't mean there is no intention to do magic necessarily, it may just mean the ritual is poorly constructed. Either way though, not going to hit the home run.

So what're some means of creating change by magic?

Spirits. Spirits are probably one of the oldest identifiable methods of agency in magic. They can achieve goals by way of offerings, pacts, or commanding them by names and seals.

The Kabbalah's magical elements involve arranging series or correspondences to track pathways of manifestation along the Tree of Life to create particular results.

More modern sources deal with flows of psychic energy and the creation of manipulation of thought-forms or of the astral light.

Somewhere between that more modern method and classical ones we see the conjuration of elemental and planetary forces, and other unseen forces within the universe to be applied to a situation by way of symbols of not by spirits.

There are many forms of agency, or means of power and action, which your magic can take, but it has to take one, or at least one, in order to be magic. Even more it has to apply it appropriately in a way relevant to the goal.

So in summation your magic should...

...start with a clearly defined goal

...have the actual intention of achieving the goal

...use techniques to manipulate and apply some means of achieving that goal.

So, you might still say, “well, how can we say these things are required for magic or that just doing ritual doesn't mean these things are happening?”

I would answer that it's pretty easy to watch a ritual and see if you can determine the goal, and the method for achieving it. The intention to succeed is less visible. Either way, magic should be somewhat testable. For those coming out of a Thelemic background, the method of science, the aim of religion. We should be able to review our actions and anticipate results and track whether to actions and results align and potential causes of error. This is a key part of training within the A.'.A.'. system, and was also applied amongst the Golden Dawn. Further both the A.'.A.'. and Golden Dawn worked to expand the powers of the subtle body of the initiate, with this being accomplished the initiate should be sensitive to the magical movements stirred by another's ritual, and a sufficiently advanced initiate should be able to recognize magic from theater. This testing of results and abilities was not something that was unique to the student, both the A.'.A.'. and the Golden Dawn worked with experiments to test psychic perceptions as the initiate developed.

In any case, arguing about the historical support for a magician to be able to recognize whether something is magic or bunk won't get us too far, but we at least have some notes to consider when planning our ritual actions so we can ask ourselves “Is this functional as magic or am I just doing ritual for some other reason?”

Little questions like that might seem unimportant if you're getting something out of it either way, but they're necessary to help you get to know your most reliable partner in all of this, yourself. As you understand what your motivations are more clearly, you can begin to understand how to achieve them more thoroughly.

Why your Magic should, you know, be magic.

It came up recently in a discussion the criticism of magicians who don't do magic. It's a strange sort of topic. People like to point the finger despite the three which point back at them. I myself try to point all four, retaining the thumbs up for those who actually do the work. What I mean to say here is, it's reasonable to criticize those who want to be magicians but don't do magic, but often those making the criticism fit the bill too. So we should be at pains, as magicians, to make sure that our magic is in fact magic and that we encourage and develop real magic when we can. Notice, I didn't say we should be at pains to do anything to the fake magicians. We should be too busy doing magic and being awesome to have time to become inquisitors, but we can spend our time being awesome and powerful presences and maybe lead others by our own gravitas towards being magicians who do magic.

Jack Parsons said in the Book of the Antichrist:

“An end to all authority that is not based on courage and manhood, to the authority of lying priests, conniving judges, blackmailing police, and An end to the servile flattery and cajolery of moods, the coronations of mediocrities, the ascension of dolts. ”

And the Book of the Law says:

“Despise also all cowards; professional soldiers who dare not fight, but play; all fools despise!”

In the first instance we're kind of calling for the unseating of the false from positions of power. There is a definite social commentary element but also a mystical one. For our society to truly flourish we need those who are rooted in strength and forcefully called to grow in the proper manner to not only be its leaders, but also to be its people. We need those who are fully self possessed and ready to commit to the virtues of the heroic that flourish when we know and live in accordance with our natures.

The second statement is a little clearer to our purpose. Both note people whose actions are in opposition to their natures, lying priests, black mailing polices, soldiers at folly. In neither statement is the specific type of individual listed important, but more the point that we see individuals who turn from the work suited to their natures. In both we are set against such people as they are the antithesis of Thelema. Even for those who do not consider themselves Thelemites, this line of thinking is necessary to magic. Thelema simply restates principles which have been part of the Western Mystery tradition for millenia. Most simply we can look to alchemy, and see the idea of removing the gross detritus which hides the fine and subtle truth of a thing. We decay the outer shell and strengthen the pure inner essence to reveal the power of a thing.

With this line of thinking, that removing that which is not a thing and focusing that which is a thing we get to the true strength of the thing, and further that we must seek this in ourselves and our society in order to turn from failure to greatness, we can continue it to the idea that if we're going to be magicians we need to really be magicians in order to be successful.

This is kind of a “duh” moment. Doing actual magic gets you further as a magician than not doing magic does.

To look at it a little more, we have multiple ways in which magic can operate, multiple places from which magic takes its power. There are simple external things, signs and names, spirits, connecting with flows of energy, kabbalistic paths of manifestation, lots of different ways we can externally do simple magics. Exploring more deeply we get to points where the power and authority to do magic is strengthened as we connect more deeply to the elements of our essential natures. Just like the materium of our alchemy, as we decay the outer gunk around ourselves and strengthen our essence we become a more powerful medicine to get shit done.

Alternatively, when we're at odds with ourselves we're fighting against our success. If we are spending energy trying to be something that we aren't we aren't spending energy actually accomplishing what we want to accomplish. No one has to be a magician, but everyone should be themselves. So if you're a magician, do magic.