Let me ask you to hold three ideas in your mind as you read:
- If you can imagine it, it’s possible.
- Anything is possible, but far fewer things are probable.
- Probability and likelihood are judgements based on nurture, not nature.
Years ago, I had a conversation with Frater Rufus Opus about lottery spells. Under the influence of Jason Miller’s ideas about what magic can and cannot do (“You need to be clear that magick works by manipulating probability, not by violating the laws of nature outright” (Sorcerer’s Secrets, 202)) and Anton LaVey’s “Balance Factor” (“Magic is like nature itself, and success in magic requires working in harmony with nature, not against it” (Satanic Bible, 94)), I told RO I thought big lotto spells were clearly for rubes and amateurs—too many wills in motion and horrible odds, making the desired outcome so improbable that enchanting for it was like trying for something contrary to nature.
This remains the conventional wisdom in books of practical magic, sometimes along the lines of: your spell might improve the likelihood of you winning the lottery, but the odds would still be tremendously against you—so leave this one alone. But RO merely said, “Set no limits for yourself and you will have none.” At the time, I thought: “Okay, man, whatever you say. I didn’t see you winning the Mega-Millions Jackpot last week.” But now I fundamentally agree with him and want to admit how wrong I was.
A lot of anxiety and whataboutery come into play in discussions about magic for grandiose outcomes, especially for obtaining big payouts and luxury items, causing sweeping cultural or political changes, or transforming other aspects of the material plane in obvious and astonishing ways. Occult authors don’t want to promise too much because they’re afraid of being called frauds if their followers fail. Online sorcerers-for-hire don’t want to promise too much because they want repeat business. Individual practitioners don’t want to try for too much because, every time a spell doesn’t seem to work, a little reductive-materialist voice in the back of their thoughts says: See? Not real. But that voice has been installed by culture and conditioning (nurture). It is not articulating an independent, objective truth about nature.
In the purest magical worldview, there are no independent, objective truths about nature. Everything is malleable to some degree, even scientific laws. As Sri Aurobindo once wrote, “There are no physical laws in the universe. They’re more like suggestions.” Likelihoods are, by extension, suggestions based on other people’s (mostly non-magical) experiences with probability, not yours. And, since the deepest essence of magic is synonymous with the miraculous, your job is to violate those suggested limitations as much as you can. You are a magician, which means you are a wonder worker: set no limits for yourself and you will have none.
The first step toward a more miraculous magical practice is believing it’s possible. In a different blog post, I talk about various ways to conjure a red rubber ball from nothing. And I note that, even as magical thinkers, we have been so conditioned (nurtured?) to see magic in materialist Harry Potter terms—a puff of smoke and a sparkly light and suddenly we are transformed—that we have become blind to the subtleties of real magical creativity. If we can’t be in the Potterverse, then we think magic must only be probability manipulation. But that would be a mistake.
Instead of a flash of light, we may find a red rubber ball simply bumping against our front door in the morning. We enchanted for it two nights ago, not knowing how it might arrive. And, wonder of wonders, here it is. How did it get here? Does it matter? We did the spell. It worked. We have produced something from nothing.
Or we conjure the ability to fly and receive an email letting us know that our air miles now qualify us for a round trip to Paris. At the same time, we have mandatory vacation days coming up at work. At the same time, that beautiful person we met in the bookstore three months ago just tagged us on social media: I’m moving across the street from Jardin Luxembourg! Interesting, Saruman, your magic is truly profound.
Or perhaps we want to levitate. We do the spell. A few days later, we take our sister’s kid to a hands-on science museum where we discover a contraption that uses forced air to make things and people float. We step on with our niece and have a realization. Yep. We’re levitating.
These are silly examples, but sometimes the miraculous is silly. Sometimes, it’s gravely serious. Around the time Putin invaded Ukraine, I was reading Olympians’ Magick: Pathworkings of the 12 Hellenic Gods by Hecateus Apuliensis. It’s an interesting book, more chaos magic than anything else. But something about it called to me. So when President Zelensky mentioned his worry that the US / NATO wouldn’t set up a no-fly zone and this would allow Russia to achieve air superiority (and murder a lot more innocent people), I decided to ask Zeus, Lord of the Sky, to stop it.
The results (in my UPG) were dramatic. Without getting into a great deal of subjective detail, I can say that he agreed in a kind of awe-inspiring way. I felt shaken and humbled for quite a few days. As of 5 June 22, Russia has still not achieved air dominance and over 200 of their military aircraft have been shot down. Did I need to see the skies ripping open apocalyptically, like in an Avengers movie, to know that Zeus made good on his promise? Certainly not. The red rubber ball appeared at my door, the exact one I conjured. And that is enough.
My point is: we can accomplish wonderous things, things that even other occultists don’t believe are possible. But we have to believe. We have to imaginatively open our minds and push out the limiting suggestions made by those who can’t do the same. With this in mind, it may be as easy to conjure a paperclip as it is an aircraft carrier. There’s no way we can foresee all the different causal chains that could bring either of these things into our lives. All we can do is futilely speculate based on what culture has told us is probable—a culture that barely believes in magic, even on its most openminded day.
If you can imagine it, it’s possible—because anything is. So if you want to make a great change in the world, don’t automatically think the world is so big and I am so small. You are gigantic. You have a power in you that no one, not even you, will ever fully understand. It is that of creation itself. And if you don't deny that power, neither will the gods. So do a divination to understand what you intend to conjure (you don’t want to enchant for the ability to fly and find yourself blown off a roof) and then, if the information is good, be brave and work wonders. And if you do win the lottery, remember to send a few bucks to your friend, Witch Moon.