Some people take to magic like a goblin in a cave or a fish to water, while other are befuddled and confounded in the early days.
There are many reasons for this and an entire book might be written solely on the topic of how to assess and improve results during your first year of practice.
Here are four things to consider which I believe will improve your results from the start.
1. Approach Magic like a Skill
Remember that magic, as a practice, is an overall skillset built upon smaller skills and sets of skill. It follows that attentive practice over time will improve one’s effectiveness with all involved skills.
Some people who take up magical work are more naturally inclined, or talented, than others, as is the case with music, athletics, carpentry, etc. Just as training will eventually produce a more skilled musician, athlete, or carpenter than any amount of inborn talent, so to will study and practice create a more potent magician than raw aptitude alone.
Approach your magic as you would any other skill you aim to master. This mindset alone will enhance your development. Add to this regular practice with a commitment to excellence and desirable results become inevitable.
2. Understand Magic is an Agent of Influence
As a cause, or force that affects reality, magic is most correctly viewed as an agent of influence. Too often, and yet understandably due to all the misinformation and misconceptions available on the topic, people tend to think of magic as a sort of cheat code or miraculous process that can just skip over or omit the processes of reality and, well, “magically” and instantly cause change to take place. This is the view of magic as “supernatural” or somehow outside of the laws that govern our universe. Another term for this kind of imaginary phenomena is “anomalous”. This childhood sort of view is skewed and, more simply just false. Magical forces are quantitative, qualitative, and act on other phenomenon in incremental, measurable ways.
Magical energies unleashed through a spell, ritual, or other operation then, can be said to act against, upon or with causal, maintenance, or entropic forces of reality much like said forces work upon one-another. Indeed, magical forces are one or all of these categories of energy or force, et al (depending on the circumstance we may discuss at any given moment) and are distinct only conversationally as a method of clarification or education. In essence this means that any magic you cast towards a specific end will work to alter or support, influence in some way, the existing reality to which it is applied.
This is SUPER IMPORTANT so I hope you are paying attention and making a note! 🙂
As an easy analogy think of cooking a pot of stew. So far you have beef, carrots, celery, onions, and tiny little black beans. Salt, pepper, a couple of other basics all have been added and a particular meal is forming before your eyes as you heat and stir the pot. Left on the present course, a food of specific flavor and consistency, as well as predictable physiological energy value, will emerge after the prescribed time on the stove eye.
Now let’s say you decide to add a few drops of some tabasco or other hot sauce. Undeniably the product changes as a result of this action.
Even if you add only a few drops into a two-gallon pot there is change at the molecular level. You may not taste any difference with such a small dose, but the sauce has influenced the stew nonetheless.
Something about like this must happen a lot to new and even intermediate magicians. If the odds of success, without magic, in an endeavor are 200 to 1, perhaps after a spell is cast these odds become 100 to 1, or even 50 to 1. A great improvement, yet the magic-user in this hypothetical scenario still has at least 49 chances to fail and only 1 chance to succeed.
You could obviously add more hot sauce to incrementally or sequentially (or both, I’m no physicist) have an effect on, or influence the tase of your meal. Alternatively, you might choose a different type of sauce or a different brand name with more formidable ingredients. You may wish to mix two or more new ingredients, like jalapeno peppers and chili powder, to set your dinner on fire, so to speak. I’ve even heard there are techniques you can use, specific ways to stir and mix, strain and separate then re-combine, etc. to make stew hotter without loading it down with sauces and powders. One way or another, you will make that stew as hot as you like it, and this change will occur as the result of agents (peppers, sauces, etc.) and factors you apply to initiate and direct – or influence the process and thereby the outcome.
By this token magical operations hinge upon techniques and mechanics of both a physical and metaphysical nature. Enacting magic to a desired end is applying energy and force, with power, all at determinable levels and to varying degrees, in order to have a pre-determined impact on the base or starting point reality. Using different methods and energies, you can alter and adjust the nature and magnitude of this impact.
USING YOUR MAGICAL TIME WISELY
Avoid the Impossible
In general magic can only produce a result that is possible within the framework of what we call reality. Neither magic nor anything else can do the impossible, for how could it? If a thing is not possible, well that means it cannot occur on its own nor be made to happen otherwise.
I realize this truth is not popular among the spiritual, New Age, Neopagan, metaphysical, etc. crowd. It must be somehow self-deprecating or “negative” in today’s peculiar vernacular to admit impossibility is even a thing. Yet we are surrounded and permeated in this place (our material world) by limitations and specifications, from which the polarities of possible and impossible naturally emerge.
One reason this is hard for some to accept may be the fact that “impossible” is a term that gets tossed carelessly about and used in false contexts regularly. If we stop calling things that are merely hard or unlikely “impossible” we make room for the intellectual honesty needed to accept the things that truly are impossible.
For example, as far as I know, human beings have never been able to fly without the aid of some sort of flying device or tech. We don’t have wings, nor can we – again at least as far as I know – take off like Superman and soar about by force of will and superpowers. Thus no magic is going to enable you to leap from a cliff and fly away without the aid of a vehicle or other equipment like a jetpack or whatever. I freely admit that I could be wrong, but no evidence that I have ever come across or heard about suggests this so for now I’ll stand my ground.
It is foolish to burn magical time and energy chasing what cannot be. There is a fine line between accepting the impossible and engaging in self-doubt or other defeatism, but such is the cruelty of life and I won’t shy away from it. We must be grown-ass folk at a certain point in our development and learn to handle the nuance of life whereby, for instance, we accept that admitting to the existence of the impossible may run the risk of pessimism and excess naysaying.
We’re magicians, not toddlers. Let’s keep it real and do the hard thinking when it’ needed.
Start with Softer Targets
In tactical lingo a soft target is a location, group of people, or individual without the ability to resist an attack effectively. The target should be easier to secure, destroy, or whatever than a hard target or location, group, et al that is well-fortified, has security measures in place, houses a bunch of people willing to shoot back, etc.
In the beginning of your magical journey you should set your sights on the soft and easy targets to build experience and skill. You can tackle the hard and more epic stuff down the road when you have a strong base of knowledge and refined energy body.
Think about the lottery, where you might have a 1 in 100,000,000 shot at winning the jackpot. Imagine whittling the odds down closer to your favor. That would take MASSIVE energy output that most people just can’t generate, and of course don’t forget about the millions of other players, most of whom are using some kind of magic or mojo, prayer, “good luck” enhancement, etc. to further their own chances!
I’ve actually won some lottery money by way of magic, sorry to say never a jackpot. There are numerous other prizes with most games, not just the jackpot, and the odds of winning the smaller prizes are much more favorable. Going after the smaller wins or just being open to any kind of win are examples of using magical time more judiciously.
Trying to magic the lottery at any level is probably not the best game plan for most people. Unless you’re a natural gambler or lucky type of person the output required for nominal success plus the volume of likely frustration outweighs the small rewards, in my opinion. A general money spell of some kind is probably a much better bet, and in particular an abundance spell that summons new money and/or good fortune for the near future, leaving the avenue of fulfillment open.
By being open to abundance generally you give magical currents a wide range of avenues with which to work. These currents will take the path of least resistance and could manifest in any number of ways from an unexpected freebie or some found dollars to a raise at work or a previously unknown inheritance, depending upon the factors and frequencies available in and around your life.
Always Take the Time to Enter Your Magical State
I cannot overstate the importance of this part of the magical process, nor overemphasize the need for continued adherence to the principle. In fact I feel comfortable saying your magical state of consciousness is more than just necessary for the working of magic, indeed such a state simply IS the magic.
In general magic is not possible from a mundane or day-to-day state of consciousness. One must enter into one of many types of altered conscious states.
It’s correct to say that a different state is needed for astral travel than for healing. Evoking spirits and seeing the future probably require different aspects of mind or states of consciousness to be engaged, and so on. It is simpler and more streamlining, however, to strive for a generally magical state (as discussed in this post) in the beginning and learn to fine-tune this as you progress.
For whatever reason new magicians tend to resist this idea. To follow suite with such hardheads is inadvisable.
Many magicians who struggle with poor results are in fact experiencing an issue with cognitive dissidence, lack of belief, improper focus or attunement, and other imbalances that could be righted would they take the time to be sure and enter a magical state prior to their operations.
Believe
Contrary to popular belief (bada boom)… Belief ., or faith, alone will not carry you to magical success. You hear drivel like “belief is all you need” and if you’re a sharp tool in the shed you might ask “Why do we have rituals and formulas at all then?”
The aforementioned all you need crowd is just another symptom of weak, fuzzy thinking and good ol’ laziness.
Having said that belief IS monumentally important to magical success. It won’t help much without some training and skills but when added to the right fundamentals and understanding it is very much the special sauce or jeweled elixir.
Cultivate a knowing that you are a magical being who can alter reality with a command.
Expect success from your operations and anticipate great things in general from your time in this life.
Develop the mindset that things will generally find a way to work out in your favor and strive to be an optimistic person and magician.
Affirmative belief will improve your experience and your results, and negative belief about your abilities will shatter your hopes before they are born.
I hope this material serves you well.
P.S. Here’s a Bonus Item ….
Cast Often
To cast magic is to send (hurl?) your magical intention upon a current of magical force into the causal realms where it may begin the work of manifesting your desire into the material world. Cast as often as you can whether your choice method is incantation (spellcasting), ritual, talisman, divination, or spirit conjuring. The more magic you weave the more mojo you build up within your subtle-energy bodies and the better refined and enhanced your mind and abilities will become.