How Magick Works

It is not necessary to understand how magick works to perform magick any more than it is necessary to understand the life cycle of yeast or the structure of a gluten molecule to bake a good loaf of bread. But knowing a bit more about what’s going on behind the scenes allows you to develop an intuitive style, go off-recipe, and even create your own. When you understand why things are done a certain way, you are prepared to make decisions about whether or not you want to do them that way at all. Maybe there’s a better way. Maybe you lack the equipment or ingredients or have negative associations with the official recommendations. The more you know about how magick works, the greater your potential to come up with a unique style that is more effective for you than anyone else’s could ever be.

Of course, you can still have good results by following the example of others. There are countless magickal traditions that work well for somebody and at least some of these will work well for you. This site contains many basic techniques that will serve you well with or without the theory behind them. These techniques will make your spells more effective regardless of where they came from. There are countless spells in books and online for your casting pleasure and many of these will work fine as-is. If they don’t, you should feel confident tweaking them.

So. How does magick work?

Everything that exists in the Universe is made of the same stuff: Energy. This energy makes us what we are physically. It powers our perceptions and encodes our memories and accumulated knowledge. All of our beliefs, knowledge, feelings, and moods as well as everything in our environment is a product of this universal energy.

An Energetic Universe

If you can adjust that energy, just a little bit. You can create a chain reaction that causes things to happen, sometimes even quite far away. If we can access the code, we can influence the behavior of other people. This happens all the time, really. Politicians, advertising agencies, activists, fashionistas, and influencers use mundane methods (and probably often magical as well) to convince us that we believe or prefer one thing or another or that their aesthetic is our aesthetic, or that they are clever, funny, smart and capable- regardless of any evidence to the contrary. They use psychological methods, and that’s fine for people who have a platform or enough money to buy one, but for the rest of us, we find the little threads of energy in the universe and we give them a little tug.

Or more accurately, we take the bit of energy that is under our control and we fiddle with it until it’s the way we want it and then we send it to out somewhere to influence the energy of someone or something else. It works sort of the way a cold spoon in a hot mug would work. The water heats up the spoon and the spoon cools down the water. Sometimes we need multiple spoons to get the water just the way we want it but sometimes one spoon is enough.

The Power of Emotion

Most people have heard quite a bit about The Law of Attraction and the Power of Positive Thought. There are a lot of books and self-help programs out there that beat this concept into the dust. Unfortunately, most of them are missing a very important piece of the Law of Attraction puzzle. It isn’t enough to think. You have to feel and know it.

Witchcraft – or what Anthropologists and missionaries have chosen to label witchcraft- in tribal communities isn’t about elaborate spellcasting rituals and its associated fears aren’t about elderly people casting love spells and making healing potions. Witchcraft to these folks implies an emotional state so powerful that it causes things to happen, sometimes even without conscious intention. This concept is probably more familiar in terms of evil eye beliefs of Eastern Europe, Central and South America and the Mediterranean which parallel quite closely with African and other traditional “witchcraft” beliefs.

According to these beliefs, praising a child or remarking upon someone’s beauty, wisdom or good fortune is extremely dangerous because it encourages the speaker and others who hear to harbor emotions about that person, and the most dangerous emotion of all is jealousy. Jealousy can lead to so many other emotions like anger, hate, and spite, and those emotions have the potential to become wish-fulfilling energy. Many of these beliefs are coupled with certain behaviors that are meant to nullify the potentially damaging effect of envious thoughts. Modern remnants of these ancient beliefs are seen in the Mediterranean custom of spitting on the ground at a bride’s feet and the Central and South American custom of touching or kissing a child immediately after praising it.  In these belief systems, it is not the trained sorcerer, shaman, wizard, or witch who is the greatest threat to the innocent, but the untrained, the one who has not learned to carefully guard his or her emotions. 

This is why, when people ask me “Can you curse people?” I reply, “Anyone can curse people. I just know how to do it on purpose.”

All this to say, one of the most important skills of the magic user is that of harnessing their emotions.

Emotions aren’t So Easy to Harness

Thinking alone isn’t usually enough to change the flavor of our energy whether we are coloring it to be sent out into the universe or into a person or object or whether we are simply trying to change our own personal energy frequency to attract desirable things into our lives. It’s not enough to say “I believe”. You have to be able to say “I feel it and I know it”. You have to convince yourself first.

Incantations and chants spoken or sung during ritual or spellwork help with this as does chanting mantras but even more effective is just talking about it. Talk to yourself, your magical partners, or to your pet; It is just one of many ways our familiar friends can help with our magical working. While it is generally not a good idea to discuss your magickal work with the world at large, discussing your goals and the practical steps you are taking toward them with trusted friends and family will help bolster your belief and their confidence in your ability to meet your goals will encourage your own self-confidence.

Writing is also an excellent tool for convincing yourself of the fact of your intention. It is also an excellent tool for exploring your emotions and bringing them to the surface which is exactly what you’re going for. Every magic user should keep a journal to record his experiments and keep notes on what he’s learned and this can also come in useful for writing about your emotions and intentions. Don’t just write, but read what you’ve written to further solidify it in your mind. I find that writing out a spell before performing it makes a spell even stronger, even if it’s a spell someone else wrote. 

Using symbolism to represent your goals and your feelings about them is also useful. Create a mood in your environment that symbolically stimulates all of your physical senses. Include sounds, colors, fragrances, fabrics and scents in the form of incense and perfumes to stimulate those emotions and moods associated with them. If you are artistic, utilize visual art, music, and poetry in your magical workings.

Finally, act as if your goal is a foregone conclusion. Know it. It is. Now, do the physical, mundane work.

The Problem of Inertia

Many people discount the Law of Attraction because of the tendency for poor people to stay poor, even if they are generous, and rich people to get richer, even if they are greedy, and for bad things to happen to good people. One of the reasons this happens is inertia. Many of us are familiar with the Law of Inertia which states that an object will maintain its rate of acceleration or rest unless acted upon by an outside force. While this is true of objects in space, it is also true of human life paths. Those of us who are born into privilege are positioned to continue to receive privilege unless something happens to interfere with that and since most people who are born into privilege are raised believing that they deserve what they have, are worthy of what they have, and should keep what they have, the Law of Attraction helps them not only keep what they have, but acquire more. Upwardly mobile tends to continue moving up unless something happens to interfere and down in the dumps tends to stay there until someone gives them a hand up.

This means that if you need to make a change in your life you are going to have to do some work to get the ball rolling in a different direction. Your spell helps smooth the way, but it is up to you to make your way. Casting a spell for a good job isn’t going to do you any good if you aren’t out there applying for jobs, asking around, updating your resume, and tweaking your LinkedIn profile.

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