Do practical magic for a while and you start to wonder about
results. Of course, you felt insecure
about results from the beginning of your involvement with sorcery because reductive
conformist materialism has drummed into your head that nothing exists unless
you can place it on a physical scale: emotions are chemicals; there is no soul;
and human identity comes down to DNA and brain architecture. The non-material is synonymous with the
non-real. Science, technology,
engineering, mathematics, and profit are all that truly matter in life, with social status as an irrational adjunct. That’s the reductive materialist party line
we all inherit. Acting contrary to such
ironclad scientism inevitably creates a lot of inner dissonance for creative and magical people. Getting over it and
transcending the dark side of post-industrial capitalism is a crucial part of
learning magic.
But you always wonder about results. This is mostly because, when your magic
succeeds, it seems self-guided or directed by fate or some other power beyond your
understanding. The simplest money
drawing candle can cause you to get fired by one employer and subsequently hired
by another. It can bring you marriage
(or divorce). It can send you around the
world, grant you an inheritance (sorry grandpa), or drop a suitcase of cash on
your doorstep in the middle of the night with no explanation at all. And so you’re bound to ask: why did it do
exactly what I envisioned last time and utterly surprise me with an unorthodox trajectory
or outcome this time? Is this all just
coincidence? Am I delusional? Am I imagining connections and cause-effect
relationships where there is only chaotic recombination of pre-existing variables?
If you’re good enough at divination, you can sometimes answer
a few of these questions. But the
answers don’t matter because results-based magic isn’t rocket science. It’s more like art—the picture you paint
today might seem better or worse than the one you painted yesterday, but you can
be sure that they won’t ever be identical, even if the materials you use are the same.
The old adage about not being able to step into the same river twice very
much applies: you can’t systematize a magical act beyond the most basic ritual observances. Magic always goes
its own way and it often takes the path of least resistance toward the goal. Accepting this is another difficult step in
one’s magical education.
Make fun of Anton LaVey all you want, but he knew more about
practical magic than many of today’s so-called occult scholars. The chapter in his Satanic Bible
entitled, “The Balance Factor” is worth more than most of today’s doorstop-worthy
sorcerous manuals, especially the chapter’s last sentence: “Magic is like
nature itself, and success in magic requires working in harmony with nature,
not against it.” Nature is always changing. Therefore, magic is always changing. Therefore, being receptive to the ebb and
flow of that continuous process of change is fundamental to doing magic. In other words, in magic, as in everything
else, change is the only constant.
So how do you develop this receptivity? Meditation works wonders. Developing keen powers of observation,
visualization, and critical thinking are essential. Learning how to suspend critical thinking in
the service of ecstasy also matters. And,
if you’re trying to learn magic, you should do a lot of it in addition
to theorizing about it. It’s what
Aleister Crowley (partly) meant when he said, “Invoke often!” The only way to do a thing well, especially a
magical thing, is to do it a lot. Accept
that you will fail. Learn its
nature by involving yourself with it.
Malcom Gladwell, in his tiresome Outliers, suggested that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to get good at something. Perhaps that’s true, even if the number seems a bit spurious and arbitrary. Still, the basic idea is compelling: practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. In so doing, try to recognize trends and “laws,” for lack of a better term, amid all the changes. Magic does have some in spite of its incessant variations and paradoxes, even if the laws you think you’re uncovering may only apply to you and may eventually change when you do.
It’s hard to tell when you’re getting good at something so protean, but as Crowley says in Liber Al, “Success is your
proof; courage is your armour.” Indeed,
it is. Success is your only reliable
metric. Courage is the only thing that
will keep you engaged and persevering.
And as success builds on success, you will start to see the practice
clearly.
The simplest spells can be the most instructive. Recently, I did a binding. Instead of affecting the target, the spell
affected me. It made me emotionally
immune to the target’s bad behaviour. I am
alright with that outcome because the conditions of success were not necessarily
that the target be harmed or manipulated (though, I wouldn’t have cared if that
had happened). Rather, the spell was
intended to remove the source of my upset and protect me against future offenses.
In this case, the path of least resistance involved creating an
emotional break between us, not unlike the classic hoodoo “cut and clear”
trick. And that’s just fine. Binding achieved; though, I had not imagined it would
come about that particular way.
Bindings I’ve done in the past have operated differently,
which doesn’t bother me at all. I’m open
to the changes. I’m willing to accept new
and different pathways of manifestation as long as the sought-after results do
manifest. Similarly, I once did a death
curse—don’t get excited; I’ve done very few of them—which resulted in the
target becoming dead to me. She
moved out of town. I’ve never heard
about her, from her, or seen her again.
It was as if she were plucked out of my reality forever. Did it matter that a dump truck didn’t fall
out of the sky and squash her in the street?
Not at all. My deepest wish was
that she would be erased. And so she
was.
This is how sorcery (a wonderous part and expression of nature) actually works. Sometimes the dump truck falls out of the
sky. Other times, the target moves to Houtouwan,
China, and it’s as if they took a space ship to a distant galaxy never to
return. They could have merely moved
across town or down the street, but because they are dead to you, you will never encounter them
again. The path of least resistance is
tantamount to the path of least reality distortion. This is what LaVey means when he says one works
in harmony with nature, not against it. The end is what matters, not the means.
So do. Learn. Think.
Stop thinking and feel. Record
your results. Do again. And accept that the pathways of fate and
consequence are more profound and entangled than you or I can fully grasp. That’s part of the beauty of magic. And it is a profound teacher.