Taking the Path of Least Resistance in Magic by Taylor Ellwood

Copyright Taylor Ellwood 2013 [email protected] I http://www.magicalexperiments.com

Taking the Path of Least Resistance in Magic By Taylor Ellwood

If there is one challenge that magicians face when it comes to determining the effectiveness of the magic practiced, that challenge would be figuring out if the magic you did, for whatever you did it for, really aligned with your internal values. What I’m really saying is that sometimes, even if we think we want a particular result, we really don’t want that result. Speaking from personal experience, I have always found it odd when I would do a successful act of magic, get the result I wanted, but then have the impact of that result not really count for handling the situation I was in. It was only much later that I recognized that the magic I did at the time was going counter to my innermost values. I’ve also noted this type of occurrence with other magicians. They would get results, but the results wouldn’t matter, because their values weren’t in alignment with those results and an essential part of them rejected the results. Recently I read a passage that I would like to share, which speaks to this issue, “Magick defines suffering as the result of straying from one’s natural path of ‘least resistance’” (Schueler 1988, p. 222). Suffering arises from straying from one’s natural path of least resistance. This is an interesting statement, because it speaks to several questions. Is a degree of suffering necessary, and if so how much suffering is necessary? When we are on our path of least resistance, which some might call Will and others would name a calling, are we then aligned with our innermost values? Considering these questions is important when considering the effectiveness of magic and when that magic should be employed, and more importantly why it should be employed. If a magician gets a result, but then finds that the result is wasted, at that point the magical work has also been wasted. Internal work is needed then to determine what the problem in the process is and if the problem is a conflict with the values at hand, at that point the magician needs to determine if what s/he is doing is causing hir to deviate from the path of hir will. Even if that is determined, there’s still the consideration of suffering and how much is needed in order to learn from a situation. While I don’t advocate suffering, I do recognize it has a valid place in the continuum of experiences a person can have. I won’t subscribe to a karmic notion of it, but what I do subscribe to is that a person necessarily has the experiences s/he needs to have in order learn from those experiences and over time realize what hir will, calling, or innermost values, so that the path of least resistance can be engaged in. People, by nature, are usually not equipped with the skills to recognize what they truly want. Martha Beck explains this in terms of a conflict that is created by the social self focusing on cultural-social approval, while ignoring the innermost values of the essential self (2001). The social self can get so focused on what someone believes s/he should want, that s/he forgets about what is truly desired, what truly aligns with the innermost values. This happens with everyone, including magicians. Even if a magician is involved in a counter culture, there are still social expectations that determine the expected behavior from the magician. The point is that regardless of how you consider yourself socially, the social self is involved with allowing you to fit into those circumstances, even if those circumstances run


counter to what your essential self wants. Consequently, the social self can put us into situations where we suffer. We end up in an unsatisfying relationship, in a job we hate, or in a social situation where we don’t like the people. The suffering we encounter is not so much due to the social self, as it is due to the essential self’s desire to get what it wants, which can cause conflict with the social self’s desire to fit in. The essential self will sabotage the social situations you are in, in an effort to get you back on track with what your values are. I can personally point to this in my life. Even though the social self said I should get a tenured position in a university because it’s as secure a job as you can get, my essential self found that to be unbearable and consequently derailed that effort. I looked back later, after I left the Ph.D program I had been in, and I could see how I had sabotaged myself because my essential self and my core values was at odds with my social self and what I felt I should be doing. In the present, I find that my life has gotten easier because I’m learning to figure out what my innermost values are. I still listen to the social listen, but I balance it with an awareness of following my true calling. The amount of suffering, of situations that have occurred where I’m not happy has decreased and continues to decrease. This isn’t to say my life is automatically easy, but the challenges I do face are ones I can face with ease, with a sense of awareness of what I need to be doing and that makes a big difference when I choose to apply magic to a situation. Magic is often treated as a quick way (in many books) to deal with a situation, but rarely, it seems, is it examined as a process for focused change, used to mindfully, with awareness of intent and impact, steer the direction of one’s life toward the path of least resistance. Indeed, it is fair to say in my case that it is really only in the last few years that I have begun to work magic in a direction that involves a process, as opposed to just getting some results that serve to fix a situation quickly. Magic as a process has involved stepping back and really examining the direction of my life and how magic is applied toward that. I’ve asked myself if I’m really listening to my innermost values, true will, or whatever term denotes being in touch with the essential self or Holy Guardian Angel. Magic, when I’ve used it as a process, has helped me ask if I really need to use it for a particular situation, or if I need to handle that situation differently. I’ve come to recognize the impact of my magical intent and used that to determine if the magical action I’ve taken is really in alignment with my values. If it isn’t, chances are the result will manifest, but the situation will still not be resolved in quite the way I wanted. Taking the path of least resistance is also learning to take the path where your values shine forth and guide you through the challenges you face. Magic is a process and tool that is helpful for directing you on the path you take, especially when it is used with mindful intent and awareness. In the end however, what is really important, is knowing when to use it so that you get more than just a momentary result. Instead you manifest a change that lasts a life time and helps you achieve all your goals. Achieving those goals, instead of just getting a result, will tell you if you’re on the path of least resistance, and if you’re listening to your essential self.


Bibliography Beck, Martha. (2001). Finding your own north star: Claiming the life you were meant to live. New York: Three Rivers Press. Schueler, Gerald J. (1988). Enochian physics: The structure of the magical universe. St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications.


Wealth Magic: Making the Case that Money can be part of Spirituality

In 2006, I dedicated myself to the Element of Earth for an entire year. Over the course of that year, one of the biggest changes I made involved learning a lot more about how finances work. I wasn’t surprised that this happened, because the element of Earth deals with practical matters and survival needs, as well as the connection we create with our environment. In contemporary culture, finances are an inevitable part of survival for the majority of people, but despite that being the case, or perhaps because it is the case, blending wealth into spirituality becomes an area fraught with complications for people. In the year I did the elemental earth working, I also decided that I should sponsor an anthology on wealth magic, Manifesting Prosperity, to see how people approached incorporating wealth into their spirituality and vice versa. What really surprised me was how few people responded with articles for the anthology. It seemed like there weren’t many magicians who actually did wealth magic. Should I have been so surprised? Likely not. I’d noticed in the pagan subculture a tendency to revile money and treat it as a necessary evil and something that had to be dealt with. I also noticed how rare it was for people providing spiritual services to get paid. In fact, I’d often here an argument that stated that people offering spiritual services shouldn’t charge customers, because money shouldn’t be associated with spirituality. Never mind that the people offering those spiritual services might need that money to pay bills and provide a roof and food for their family or that it might’ve cost those people time, effort, and money to acquire the skills and services they offered. Someone who charges for spiritual services is perceived as cheapening those services, because s/he mixes the profane world of finances with the spiritual world of magic. It’s not for nothing that the word stingy is associated with Paganism. The occult subculture has a similar attitude toward the mixing of wealth and magic. While not as overtly disdainful of spending money for spiritual services as pagans can be, it’s still not unheard of to hear the argument that pursuing wealth is counter to the occult subculture or that someone who pursues wealth is a corporate drone, or out to oppress someone else because of the desire to generate wealth. These attitudes are ultimately based in a perception that poverty is somehow virtuous and that people who are wealthy have somehow demeaned themselves by choosing to generate financial wealth in their lives. When an attitude toward financial wealth argues that having it somehow cheapens a person, it displays a dysfunctional belief, which ironically enough is rooted in the Christian culture, which has argued that being poor and giving up materials goods is the way to live a virtuous existence (how ironic then that many of the Christian people who espouse live an existence based on acquiring wealth and using it gain more power). I don’t think every person should go and be an entrepreneur or sell their souls to a corporation. However, I do think that cultivating a better relationship with wealth is not only an imminently practical matter, but also a spiritual one as well. For a person to pursue a spiritual path, some form of wealth is needed to take care of the practical issues that everyday life offers.


Cultivating a spiritual relationship with financial wealth or wealth of any sort relies upon a person figuring out why they feel or think what they do about wealth. Our attitudes and beliefs don’t just appear. They are rooted in the patterns we acquire from situations we are in. In fact, usually where people acquire their attitudes, education, and skills with finances is from their parents. I’ll use myself as an example. One belief I used to have about finances, and wealth in general was that I had to struggle in order to acquire it. I got this belief from my mother who espoused a similar such view and has always struggled with managing her finances. I realized just how much this perspective has influenced not just my approach to finances, but also how I lived my life, when I decided to move from Seattle to Portland. I had never liked living in Seattle, and I loved it whenever I visited Portland, but at the last minute I started waffling over whether I should really live in Portland or if I should give Seattle another chance. I was reading T. Harv Eker’s The Millionaire Mind and I did some of the exercises he suggested and realized that the root of my sudden struggle about moving to Portland came from this belief that I had to struggle in order to be happy. Once I understood that, I could change that belief and I did. Shortly after I moved to Portland and my life has become much happier with much less struggle. Clearly the belief that I had to struggle to achieve happiness has affected my approach to wealth and life. It wasn’t until I had done the necessary internal work that I could change that belief and consequently adjust my inner barometer when it came to wealth. As a result when I hear other occultists or pagans offer similar reasons for why they dislike wealth, I recognize it has very little to do with being virtuous or spiritual. Those are rationalizations that disguise the deeper issues at hand, which usually are negative distortions and conditioning about what wealth generates in a person’s life. Even the most recent situation in the world economy points to a deeper issue than just people getting greedy over real estate. While it is certainly true that the lack of regulation and the bad loans from banks has contributed to an economic disaster, which is similar to the depression, it can also be said that the aversion to handling wealth or dealing with it as necessary part of our lives has lead to a lot of the economic grief as well. No one forced people to take bad loans on houses they bought. Those people could’ve avoided a lot of economic woe if they had realistically developed a financial plan that would allow them to buy a house when they had the necessary financial resources to do so. A poor attitude about finances generally results in poor education about finances. The public schools (in the U.S.) generally don’t teach finances and unless you get a degree in accounting in college, you usually won’t learn it in college either (and I’ve also known the occasional accountant that can’t handle his or her personal money all that well either). So what’s a person to do about this and how does magic factor in with wealth? Shortly after I started my elemental earth working, I also decided to create a wealth entity. Once I created it, I asked it to manifest wealth. It responded by telling me it couldn’t that until I learned how to handle wealth. It told me to pick up books on finances and start learning how to handle what I did have. Once I could do that, it might be able to help me with acquiring more wealth. So I picked up books on finances and far from finding them boring or uninteresting, I


quickly realized there was a lot to learn more about finances and how to manage what I did have. I learned it, and my relationship with wealth changed as I began to realize the possibilities that it could offer me. Instead of focusing on what I didn’t have, I started recognizing what I did have as well as the possibilities all of that opened up to me. This change in attitude also caused the wealth entity to work for me. It knew that until my attitude about finances changed, anything I did with finances wouldn’t work, because my internal tapes would tell me that I didn’t know how to handle money. Learning how to handle money changed my internal attitudes and also showed me that spirituality could be blended with the so-called dirty lucre. In fact, blending my spiritual practices with how I managed money showed me that my spirituality could have a practical side in everyday life and could also cause me to ask some hard questions about where I was spending money and how I was spending it and whether that was in accordance with my spiritual values. Since doing that year long working to Earth, I still do a lot of wealth magic. I have a prosperity jar, which is where I pay me wealth entity with money. That money gets invested in retirement funds, emergency savings, or some other account where the interest that is generated adds to the wealth. I also continue to do a lot of work with my mental attitude about wealth. While I don’t believe in the law of attraction as it is espoused in The Secret, I do recognize that the attitude I take with any situation sets the tone for that situation and for the possibilities that arise out of it. By meditating on my attitudes about wealth, I was able to recognize how I closed myself off from potential avenues of generating it. I then changed those attitudes and started manifesting more wealth in my life. Something else my spirituality has done for me, when it comes to wealth, is recognizing what the concept of wealth really means to me. Money is certainly part of my wealth, but I’ve also realized just how wealthy the people in my life make me feel. The time spent with friends, family, and lovers are times of wealth for me. They enrich my life. Likewise, choosing to pursue a career where I feel like I’m doing something meaningful for myself and others has also made me feel wealthier. Learning to define my wealth in terms of not just my monetary intake, but also the experiences and people and meaning I find in life has changed my attitude immeasurably and this could not have occurred if I hadn’t integrated my finances into my spiritual practice. Instead of feeling that I have sold out to the man or become some corporate lackey, I feel that incorporating my magical practices into my wealth has asked me to be more authentic with myself about the importance of wealth in my life, financial or otherwise. Instead of feeling sullied for charging for my spiritual practices or for creating a wealth entity to generate more wealth, I feel empowered and more aware of my choices and what they really mean for me. If we are to learn a lesson from the current economy, a good lesson might be what does having wealth really mean to you and what will it give you? The integration of my spiritual practice into my own pursuits of wealth has answered that question for me and helped me enjoy life far more than when I used to believe that being poor was virtuous and everyone “better off” than me was somehow out to screw me over as much as possible.


Wealth as Comfort instead of Survival In my most recent article for Reality Sandwich, on Wealth magic, some of my readers brought up some excellent points about wealth and the tendency to approach it from a survival mentality as opposed to a comfort mentality. More recently, I met a person who runs a successful business and doesn’t feel a need to spend much time on growing it, as she is pleased with her current level of comfort and is mainly focused on maintaining that comfort level. In talking with her about wealth, she told me that her main purpose in attaining that wealth is to maintain enough to allow her to live her life and focus on the projects and people that really matter to her. It strikes me that her perspective is much more sane than the survival focused perspective on wealth, which seems to mainly involve acquiring as much wealth as possible, in as few hands as possible, in order to ensure that one has a better chance of surviving any of the rough spots that occur along the way. At the same time, it could be argued that approaching wealth from a standard of comfort is a luxury for a few, whereas many people have to approach wealth from a perspective rooted in survival, in order to acquire enough to get to that point where they can live comfortably. There’s some validity to that argument, but the friend I wrote about is certainly not as wealthy as some other people I know. She could easily grow her business further if she wanted to. However, she also recognizes that growing her business is not as important as pursuing other interests in her life. Essentially, she has known when to say enough to the acquisition of wealth. What also needs to be considered is the system of economics. One commenter pointed out that in Europe, people are not nearly as obsessed with acquiring wealth, because their system of economics isn’t based on a capitalist model. The economic model, for the US, is capitalistic and as such is driven toward an acquisition of wealth, but mainly for survival. In fact, the acquisition of wealth has become an obsession to one extreme or another, where one extreme focuses on keeping up with the Jones and the other form looks on any acquisition of wealth with extreme disgust and wariness. The problem with both extremes is the focus on money to the point where perspective is lost about what money is for, namely that it should not be an end result, but should merely be a means of facilitating a person’s journey in this life. Recently, I’ve been reading The Analects by Confucius and there is one point he makes in it, which I think highlights big issue within American Culture: “It is not easy to find a man who can study for three years without thinking about earning a salary…It is shameful…to make salary your sole objective” (Confucius 1979, p. 31). While Confucius wrote thousands of years ago for a different culture, it is nonetheless striking how accurate what he writes has bearing on how people approach wealth. Having taught at a university for a few years, what often struck me about my students was how many of them were focused on salary above all else. Their main concern was how much money they could make at a job, instead of how much enjoyment they could have while working at that career. They never seemed to consider what good the money would do them if they were miserable. An approach to wealth, which doesn’t define what wealth really is inevitably seems to focus on the most symbol of wealth: money. But money alone doesn’t signify wealth. I do think it’s important to cultivate a healthier relationship with money, but part of cultivating that relationship involves defining what wealth is to you, how you know you have it, and what role money plays


in manifesting that wealth. You can’t take money out of the equation, but you can define it and understand it in terms of how you utilize it to live your life. Here are some questions to consider: What does money allow me to do? How much time do I want to spend in pursuit of money? How much time do I want to spend doing what I enjoy doing? Can I do something professionally that I enjoy and still bring in the desired income I want? What are five of my lifetime goals and how much is money related to those goals? Answering these questions can give you an idea of the relative importance that money may or may not have in your life. Ideally, what will be realized is that money is merely a means to an end. That said, it’s still important to foster a healthy internal relationship with your attitude about money, if for no other reason than so that you can utilize it effectively to realize your goals and vision for what you want to bring to your life. Utilizing wealth for comfort instead of survival and for community instead of for the individual ultimately calls on all of us to shift our attitudes about wealth from a mentality that focuses on looking out for the self first, toward a mentality that asks how the wealth we have is used for the benefit of everyone. In reading the Analects of Confucius, I am struck by the notion that a person's actions need to be for the betterment of all, instead of just him or herself. And while it is true that Confucianism in its applications has not always benefited everyone, there is something to be said for examining a model of interaction that does emphasize benevolence toward all and decries doing actions solely to profit the self. I do not necessarily think that Confucianism is the answer toward how we can or should shift our mentality about wealth, but I would argue that it offers a different and needed perspective on how we conceive of wealth and the pursuit of it in light of how it effects others as well as ourselves. Manifesting wealth isn't just about how much money you make. It's also about the relationship you cultivate with this world and the people you interact with. Manifesting wealth can include growing your own food (and sharing it) or giving money to a cause, or giving time and effort to a cause. Manifesting wealth can involve choosing to help other people around you that need help (and being thankful that they help you when you need it). Manifesting wealth is knowing you have people around you that lookout for you, even as you lookout for them. And manifesting wealth is living a life of comfort, but not necessarily one of excess money. All the same, a person who is wealthy is always a person who has a healthy attitude about money and it's place in manifesting the life s/he lives. Confucius (1979). The analects. Trans. D. C. Lau. New York: Penguin Books.


Creating Order from Chaos in Space/Time Magic One perspective of Space/Time Magic that I've found useful to cultivate is the creation of order from chaos. More specifically what I'm referring to is an ability to filter out extraneous possibilities in order to focus on one possibility you want to manifest into reality. If you open yourself to a non-linear perspective of time, what you will discover is the availability of lots of possibilities. In fact, you have access to as many possibilities as you can imagine. However, all these possibilities exist together, and embody the entrophic forces of chaos. The ability to pick one possibility over all the others is how you create order from chaos. To do that there are several factors to be considered, which can be helpful in teaching you how to filter out extraneous possibilities. This first factor to consider involves how much effort is needed to make a possibility into reality. Some possibilities will need more effort in order to be made into reality. The reasons for more effort vary from situation to situation, but the reasons are always based on your circumstances. In other words, your circumstances and environment shape how likely a possibility will manifest into reality. If you want to manifest money into your life, but you don't have any obvious mundane means to do so, the magical effort involved will be a lot more. On the other hand if you work at a job and enchant to get a promotion, it will be more likely to occur because you've already provided a path of least resistance for the possibility to manifest through. The second factor is your internal beliefs and values. If your values and beliefs don't align with the possibility you want to manifest, you will either not manifest it, or if you do manifest it, you'll sabotage it and lose the result. The level of conflict or chaos you have about a given possibility or decision impacts your ability to act on and realize your possibility as a reality. This is why I think it's important for both beginning and experienced practitioners to have some kind of meditation or internal work they do that causes them to examine their own beliefs and values. Those beliefs and values aren't just nebulous concepts, but are embedded in your experiences. For example, if you have limiting beliefs when it comes to money, then you will manifest those beliefs in how you handle money, until you do the internal work that allows you to examine and change those limiting beliefs. The final factor to consider are the consequences of achieving your result. While you obviously may not be able to anticipate every consequence, it is useful to forecast the ones you can consider, in order to determine if you can handle them. Some magicians do this via divination, but I find it is useful to simply look at what the desired result is, and then ask yourself, how that desired result will affect you, your loved ones, and any other environmental aspects that the result will touch on. If you can, with a clear conscience, handle whatever consequences might result, then it's to pick your technique that will help you organize the chaos of possibilities into the order of reality. Several Techniques you can use


The first technique you can use involves visualizing multiple bubbles. Each bubble contains a possible reality. You want to create or identify the bubble that represents the possibility you want to manifest into reality. All the other bubbles represent unwanted possibilities. You want to 'pop' those bubbles, taking all the energy from them and channeling it into the bubble that represents the ideal possibility. By draining the belief, energy, possibility, etc. from the bubbles that contain unwanted possibilities you are removing those possibilities, and at the same time putting all of that belief, energy, etc., into the one possibility you want to bring into reality. Once you are satisfied that the bubble containing your ideal possibility has enough energy, visualize it becoming part of your body, with the understanding that it will find a way to manifest into reality through your actions and through the elimination of all the other possibilities. A second technique I use is the sigil web. I developed this technique from a pre-writing exercise used to inspire my former English composition students to write. It is also based on the concept of mind-mapping, which was developed by Lana Israel to help children learn better. Lana Israel is not a mage, but her idea, as well as the pre-writing technique, is well worth using in a magical way. The basic structure of this exercise is a web. The web allows a student to brainstorm, but in a way that doesn’t require a lot of writing. It’s set up much like a spider web. First you have the central circle. In that circle is the concept you want to write about. Radiating out from that central circle, you draw lines and circles, and in the circles you write whatever associations come to mind. This helps you organize information. For instance, I could write the word “sigil” in the center and then draw lines to several circles and write “symbol” in one circle and “magic method” in another. Each of those circles would spawn more lines, with more ideas, until eventually you have a page full of lines and circles connected to each other. That’s the application for writing. Mind mapping, on the other hand, recognizes that schools teach children in a linear manner, but that the hardware for the brain is non-linear. The technique of mind-mapping is similar to the web I mentioned above. The difference is that Israel’s technique incorporates the use of color as a means of retaining memory of a concept you are working with. You color the symbols and lines with colors that help you imprint and remember the concepts you are learning about. The symbols are melded with the colors to create associations within the mind, thus imprinting it with information. Mind mapping can be very useful for magical work. It works on a similar principle to what I’ve described earlier, the only difference being that in magical work the goal is to forget the purpose behind the symbol. My technique for this work has melded the two concepts of the web and mind mapping together. With the web, I do workings that are more concerned with linkage than anything else. First, I draw a sigil that represents me. This sigil is my essential being. Next, I draw sigils that represent concepts, people, places, objects, and situations within my life. I link these sigils to the primary sigil with lines. I write these sigils down, and draw the lines. I look these sigils over, meditate on them for a bit, think about what they represent within my life, how important they are, etc. Then I decide with which sigils I want to strengthen my connection, and which I want to


cut the connection to. I sometimes end up drawing additional sigils around the sigils I do want to keep. The additional sigils can be used to flesh out the original (and the influence) I’m keeping, as well as modifying the influence. You determine, for instance, if there are aspects of the influence that need to be cut, while retaining the overall influence in your life. For example, you might really like your boy/girlfriend, but feel some of his/her friends are bad influences that affect the relationship. You could draw lines from the sigil that represented your boy/girlfriend to tertiary sigils that represented these friends and bad influences, and then cut them out of your life, while retaining the sigil that represents your significant other. If you feel you instead need to strengthen the connection between the tertiary sigils and the primary influence sigil, just do what you feel is appropriate. Some of the tertiary sigils could represent good influences or desired results, such as a raise at your job; you should keep those sigils, so they can modify the primary sigil. The idea is that these tertiary sigils will not merely strengthen the influence in your life, but also strengthen the manifestation of that influence, as well as acting as parameters that define the nature of how it manifests. For the sigils I want to keep I get creative. I might draw other symbols, and/or use colors to represent the nature of the relationship, its importance to me, and in what ways I seek for the connections to be strengthened between the sigil that represents me and the other sigils that represent other people, events, and situations in my life. I put a lot of effort into this work, because I want to represent my needs and desires accurately. Through doing this, I also put energy into the sigils, so in a real sense I’m charging them by doing the labor of love (i.e. art) that I do. After I’ve cut the sigils out that I don’t intend to keep, I either use masturbation or some other way of shedding bodily fluid to fire the remaining sigils. Or I simply tack the web on the wall and will the sigils to manifest and then ignore them. Whatever way you fire your sigils should be effective with this technique. When I discard the sigils I don’t want, I think about why I don’t want them and what they represent. I make sure my reasoning is very clear and to the point. I take out a pair of scissors and cut the sigils. Then I burn them. The act of cutting is the means by which I charge the sigils up with an energy that takes a person or situation out of my life. The act of burning is the firing mechanism for the sigil, the ashes dissipating, and with them the negative influence that affected me. At this point, I put the web on my wall, where I can see it every day. Eventually it becomes background image that I don't think about, but its working to bring the possibilities I want into my life. Occasionally, I’ll destroy a web and start a new one. Life changes and so do my needs. Using the sigil web is an effective way to work magic. It also requires simple, easily available materials – paper, pen, some crayons, paints, etc, and a pair of scissors – so it’s easy on your budget. These are just two techniques you can use to bring order to chaos via space/time. You can develop your own techniques as well. What's important is that you recognize how to organize chaos into order by filtering out the possibilities you don't need, so you can manifest the possibilities you do need into your life.


Cultivating Relationships with your Spiritual Entities When you've practiced magic long enough, you inevitably start to form relationships with spiritual entities, and much like relationships you have with people, its takes some work on your part (and their part) to create a healthy and sustainable relationship. There's also the question of how you form the relationship initially. There are some approaches to forming a relationship with a spiritual entity that I would find quite rude (these approaches involve commanding an entity to appear and do what you tell it to do), and other approaches I wouldn't do because I'd be concerned about how much power I was giving to the entity. Personally I prefer a middle approach. I'm not going to worship a spiritual entity or deity and do what it says. If I wanted to do that I'd have stayed with the religion of my family. But neither do I believe in doing the medieval approach to evocation which involves summoning the entity and threatening it with other entities in order to coerce it into doing something. I figure why not just ask nicely and on top of that create a good relationship? I know, I know, some of you will say, "That sounds rather fluffy and ill-advised." But seriously why not simply dispense with all the theatrics and try and make nice? It's always worked for me and I've gotten the results I've wanted while also creating a solid relationship with the entity I've worked with. My initial approach to cultivating a relationship is to do some research about the entity I want to work with. Who is s/he/it? What does said entity like or dislike? What does said entity actually do or help someone with? Once I've learned that information I decide if I'll want to actually make contact. Making contact consists of invoking the entity and explaining why I'd like to work with it, as well as finding out if it wants to work with me and what it might like in return for working with me. Once we establish what both sides want and decide if it's doable, then I proceed to creating a gift/offering to the spirit, which also serves as a way to evoke it. I'll invoke the entity to help with the creation of the gift (usually something I make), and what I make always has the sigil or seal of the entity on it. If the entity doesn't have a sigil or seal, I ask it for a symbol I can use that represents it. The offering its a gift to the entity, but also enables me to evoke it and work with it directly. I don't do the usual type of evocation associated with incense and candles and protective circles. I use the actual object created for the entity for the evocation and its always worked when I've wanted to bring the entity forth into the world at large to do some work together. I also make sure to honor my side of the agreement, doing whatever it was the entity asked me to do to honor it. In return I've always found that entity has done the same. We treat each other with respect and it works. Let me provide an example. In August of 2011 I learned about Bune. He's a goetic demon that you can find in the Goetia. I'd noticed that several other occult bloggers had been writing about their experiences with him (they were mixed evidently) and since one of his areas of influence is wealth, I thought I might work with him, and see if he could help me with my business. I wasn't too happy with my business at the time, both in terms of the finances coming and in terms of the services I was offering and I knew I needed some help.


I looked Bune up in the Goetia and saw that he was indeed associated with Wealth. I invoked him and asked him if he'd help me with my business. He asked that in return I write about him and that I include his sigil if I ever write a book on wealth magic. That seemed workable for me. I created a painting with his sigil on it (which is in my office to this day) and evoked him. The first thing he did was tell me that I needed to read books on business development and he also directed me to take a class on small business management. Over the course of the next year, I'd get intuitive pings from him and suggestions that included shifting my primary business to a coaching practice, and turning my occult author website into an actual business. Every time I followed the advice I found that my businesses improved. I now have a business coaching practice that allows me to work with other business owners on their business (and wouldn't you know it I get insights on that as well from Bune). I launched my first correspondence course for the magical experiments site and I am continuing to read books on business development and refining both businesses. One might point out that I could do most of that without Bune, but it was my work with Bune that provided me the guidance to make the choices I've made. Bune has helped me grow my business and in turn I have and continue to write about him and honor him, and in that process made other people more aware of him and how he can work with them. The relationship works because we honor each other and what we've agreed to do. And that is how you cultivate a relationship with your spiritual allies. What would you do to cultivate a relationship with your spiritual allies? How does your approach differ from mine?


How Inner Alchemy Aligns External Reality For the last four and a half years, I've been engaged in an intense regime of inner alchemy and energy work, meditation, and reflective contemplation of my behaviors and actions. As I've engaged myself in this work, I've found that my need to do acts of magic in the external world has been cut down significantly. There is a definite correlation between the decrease in doing acts of magic to effect the external world in relationship to the increase of doing internal magical work with one's attitudes, beliefs, and emotional triggers. The use of magic to deal with external situations arises many times out of the reaction and dysfunctional conditioning the magician has experienced as s/he has grown up. It also arises out of a desire to control situations and people in order to manifest a specific outcome. Yet, from my own experiences, and also from observing other magicians, what I all too often have noted is that even when a desired result is manifested, it is not enough and indeed may not even stay manifested long, before the magician sabotages what was gained. It is not enough, because the result usually only temporarily addresses the need the magician is trying to meet and the result can be lost by sabotage, if there is some part of the magician that feels on any level that s/he doesn't deserve the result. While it is true that results oriented magic works and can get results, what is often lacking in it is an internal awareness of the process that manifests the result. When the magician is urged to not ask why or utilize critical inquiry for the process, but instead to just do magic, what inevitably results is what I call push-button magic (Morrison 2003). The button is pushed and the magician hopes the result manifests, but doesn't know for sure if it will and if it doesn't manifest s/he is not sure why it didn't, usually because of a lack of awareness of the process involved. It's not very effective magic, if you can't understand how it works or what you can do to tweak the process. This isn't to say that doing magic to gain an external result can't be effective. Sometimes it is effective, but this effectiveness is greatly enhanced by doing the necessary internal work to understand what you really want as well as what your place is within the process of magic being performed. A magician who is not in touch with his/her internal landscape when usually sabotage him or herself up to ten times more than a person who is consciously of what s/he wants as well as what motivates that desire. Doing internal work greatly enhances the efficacy of any magical working, as well as reducing the amount of problems a person encounters in his/her everyday life. By doing the internal work, the magician aligns his or her internal reality with situations that reflect the internal awareness s/he has cultivated. As a person works to remove dysfunctional conditioning and emotional triggers through meditation, pathworking, and other forms of internal work, this results in situations in the external world where the need for magic to solve situations or correct problems is greatly diminished, because the magician will recognize when and if that magical act is really needed. Something which is important to note is that I'm not trying to value internal work over external work. Neither is better than the other, but both forms of magic do complement each other and should be performed in context to each other. In fact, it is fair to say that the external and internal realities are reflections of each other. What occurs in one, inevitably effects the other. Recently a


good friend of mine was taken to task for being a political activist, because to the person who critiqued him, it seemed to distract from his pursuit of doing internal working. what the critique presumed was that my friend's political activism was unrelated to his internal work. Never once did the person consider that the political activism might have arisen out of doing the internal work or that it might affect the continuing internal work my friend is doing. Internal work shouldn't be treated as separate from external reality or vice versa. If anything, we need to recognize that every magical working is really done on a continuum that affects us on an internal and external level. For instance, I'm currently working through a yearlong ritual to emptiness. While it's certainly true that a lot of the working is being done on an internal level, via meditation and pathworking, a lot of the results are being experienced externally in my interactions with other people, but those same interactions shape the direction my meditations go in. How internal work changes the need to do external magical workings is due to the fact that when you do this work you ideally end up getting a very clear realization about what you want and/or need from the world and can then start looking for it through the interactions you have with yourself and others. External workings can still be needed, but as I and others have found, as you arrive at a place of inner peace, that same peace manifest in the world around you and consequently diminishes the type of situations where an external magical working might be needed. Another way of looking at it is that the amount of chaos in your external life is usually indicative of the amount of internal chaos in your emotional and mental inner realities. As that chaos is dealt with internally, it generally tends to decrease externally. External magic may still need to be done, but usually it will be done for other reasons than trying to contain a reason and may not be used as often if a person feels that s/he already has what s/he wants and/or needs.


Magic: It’s more than just finding Parking Spaces In my article, The role of identity within magic, one of the readers expressed her own experiences with magicians as being people who talk about magical orders and oaths and call each other frater and rave about finding parking spaces. She also noted that in terms of improving the quality of life in this world, it did not seem that magicians were doing much. Another reader believed that the practice of magic was mainly done by people who were power hungry or trying to fill a void within their lives. Yet another reader spoke scathingly of the words magic, magician, shaman, arguing that there was a guru complex associated with these terms and that magic is an archaic and out of date word that shouldn’t be used to describe the connections one cultivates with others or him or herself. None of these critiques are invalid. In fact, they are indicative of two problems that the occult subculture faces, but which it rarely addresses, namely the cultural stigma associated with the term magic (or magick if you must) and the inability to cohesively explain and demonstrate the benefits of including a practice of magic in a person’s life. Let’s explore each problem in further depth, before I point the way to a possible solution. Stereotypes about magic On any cultural level, other than the occult subculture, the term magic has a lot of cultural stigma associated with it. This cultural stigma takes three forms, and none of the forms are entirely accurate, but nonetheless they are prevalent because of a simple fact that many magicians would prefer to ignore. The term magic (or magick) has never been rehabilitated. And why is that so important? Because a certain magician once wrote that he would set out to rehabilitate magic (or as he coined it: Magick). That magician’s name is Aleister Crowley and he is probably the only occult magician that has any real claim to fame, though most of his fame is really notoriety. Crowley failed to rehabilitate magic in any substantial way. The most he did was what previous magicians did, which was write about it and spread the relevant literature to interested parties. To this day, there are people, myself included, who write about magic and yet it is still not rehabilitated. It may never be rehabilitated, at least within contemporary culture, and if it is rehabilitated, it may involve using new terminology to convey the concepts that are structured into various paradigms of magical practice. First Stigma: Magic is practiced by people who feel powerless The first form of cultural stigma that surrounds magic comes from academia. Until relatively recently (the last two decades), the majority of academic works on magic and the occult have usually depicted magic as something performed by ignorant primitives who aren’t “civilized” enough to know better or something done by eccentric “civilized” people who feel powerless and resort to using supernatural forces to gain control of their environment. Recent scholarship has gotten better, partially because there are pagans and occultists in academia who are raising their own voices, and partially because those researchers who don’t identify as pagans or occultists are willing to acknowledge their biases and consider the possibility that magic could actually work


and be utilized for a variety of reasons beyond an attempt to control one’s environment or situations. One reason, as an example, is the choice to use magical techniques to achieve an altered state of consciousness that allows the magician to connect with the universe in a fundamentally different way than everyday consciousness allows (more on this later). What must be realized about the academic coverage of magic is that such coverage is usually situated in a Western-centric perception of the universe. For instance, the argument that magic is only performed by ignorant savages is certainly rooted in Western Imperialism and the belief that the so-called primitives have an unsophisticated and irrational understanding of the world and so resort to magic as a way of controlling their environment. Did these vaunted academics consider the possibility that magic might have other uses, that it might for instance provide a common bonding experience for the community, as well as a means of focusing the intent of the community? From the writings I’ve perused, it seems the academics never considered this a possibility until very recently (For a much more comprehensive examination of this issue, please refer to the two chapters on definitions of magic that I wrote in Multi-Media Magic). The claim that magicians only practice magic to achieve a sense of power that is lacking from their lives is a claim that can easily be applied to any religious zealot as well: If I pray hard enough and long enough, God will grant me what I desire. This desire to claim power is based in a concept called magical thinking, which argues that by appealing to external powers the magician or religious person can somehow obtain control over his or her immediate reality, without having to lift a hand in the process. While it is true that magicians may work with spiritual entities and deities, creating a mutual relationship of respect where all parties benefit, it’s also true that any sense of power the magician has ultimately comes from mastering his/her internal reality. The magician achieves true power when s/he no longer reacts, and instead consciously evaluates a situation and makes a conscious choice based on that evaluation. That is real magic (and not something every magician, let alone every person has mastered). Second Stigma: Magic is evil The second stereotype of cultural stigma surround magic is the belief that magic is satanic or evil or that magicians are out to become gurus. This stereotype also points to the idea that people get involved in magic because they feel powerless. As someone who was once a born again Christian, and left Christianity because of the pervasive ignorance and intolerance that exists in the more extreme versions of it, I got involved in magic because I wanted to answer the questions about life and reality. I hadn’t gotten answers from the Christian god, and when I found about magic, I realized that here was a system of methodologies that could be used by anyone to actively work toward answering the questions a person might have about reality and life. Magic didn’t promise all the answers on a golden platter. Nor did it promise gobs and gobs of power. If anything, my own journey as a magician has involved lots of hard work, the facing of many internal demons and issues (and resolution of said demons and issues), and the humbling realizations of just how little control I may have over my immediate environment, as well as the


very empowering realizations of how much control I have over my internal beliefs and how I choose to act in a situation. The practice of magic taught me to discipline and apply myself to what I really wanted to achieve in life, as well as providing me a variety of techniques I could use to alter my consciousness, heal myself, change negative behaviors into positive ones, and in some cases increase the possibility of an opportunity working out. Nonetheless, magic isn’t a cure all. It doesn’t solve every problem and can sometimes complicate issues. And the real test of magic is not seeing how much power you can acquire. The real test involves learning to be responsible with the power you do have, which is the power of your actions and responses. And remember, magic is only one avenue of expression for those actions and responses. As for magicians trying to become gurus…just about every magician I’ve met has had anything but that particular interest in mind. Do you know how much work it takes to become a guru? Not only that but you have to keep the Guru vibe going and make sure you never make a mistake. No thanks. Being a guru is a thankless task. Whatever perks one might get for doing it, s/he is trapped by the very image s/he creates in order to obtain followers. The true magician doesn’t need to be a guru and is much more satisfied developing his/her own spiritual journeys. Third Stigma: Magic is useless The third and final stigma is the argument that magic is useless. This stigma is connected to the second problem that magicians face, namely: What is the benefit of doing magic? As one reader put it, all she seemed to hear about was the various oaths and magical orders different magicians belonged to and how impressed they were about finding parking spaces. If all a magician can is find a parking space, you have to wonder if magic is all that effective, because anyone can find a parking space. Frankly, I don’t feel that finding a parking space is an indicative of a magical achievement and if that’s all a magician is boasting about, s/he really needs to get a life and needs to spend a lot more time practicing magic and a lot less time talking about it. Likewise, talking about what magical order you belong to doesn’t say much about the benefit of magic. I don’t think that magic is an archaic word or concept. The fact that even in the most “sophisticated” cultures there are people still practicing magic speaks to its relevance. But the question does arise as to what the benefit of practicing magic is. And unfortunately a lot of the focus in magical practice is primarily on obtaining short term goals and material needs, as opposed to focusing on more long term goals. When the magician is focused on getting his/her next parking space, or even the next job, then it’s rather hard to determine exactly how magic plays a role in obtaining these things or what the overall benefit of doing magic is, other than creating some kind of placebo effect. While the magician can claim that magic has been employed to get that parking space or job, it can just as easily be said that the magician got these things through coincidence or having the right set of skills. On the other hand, when the magician obtains a result which clearly involves the creation of a reality out of improbable circumstances, that situation can be pointed to as an example of magic working to the benefit of the magician. Even so, usually such situations seem to focus on addressing the short term material needs of the magician, as opposed to doing anything more


substantial or contributory to anyone besides the magician. Little wonder that magic is considered useless, while magicians are sneered at. The lust for results is the undoing of the magician. While sometimes practicing magic to address a problem that has occurred recently is a very necessary activity, it should not be the only activity or reason for doing magic. Nor, for that matter, should the activity only focus on the material gain of the magician. Instead of summoning a Goetic demon to get a girl or a job, one might wonder what would happen if the magician chose to work with the Goetic demon to achieve a better awareness of his or her weaknesses, or to learn new skills that s/he can use to navigate life better. The Benefit of Magic and A Future Direction We can only provide a solution to the three stigmas I mentioned above when we answer: What is the benefit of doing magic? The benefit of doing magic isn’t merely the acquisition of material goods or advantageous opportunities (though these can be useful in their own right). The benefit of magic is that it provides the practitioner a methodology for interacting with reality, possibility, and his/her own conscious awareness of the space s/he travels through during these interactions. When a person can utilize magical processes to recognize the ways s/he is sabotaging herself and can then make changes and become a healthier person as well as model those changes to others then the real benefit of magic is realized. Magic is the harnessing of willful intention and conscious attention to change the self’s identity and role within the universe and recognize the potential to be part of something larger than just him/herself. And what is larger than the magician? It is not society or culture which is reflections and illusions; something a magician is a part of and affects the sense of self everyday, but nonetheless is just a matrix holding us to certain patterns and behaviors that entrap us far more than they free us. What is larger is the universe itself…and when the magician can recognize how s/he is just a small part of the universe itself, a cell in the body of the universe, but one that nonetheless either transmits healthy information or unhealthy information, then the magician might realize that the benefit of magic is the evolution of the person and the role that person plays in the evolution of the universe. Society and culture are illusions because they are transitory. What they reveal is the overall health and integration that people have with each other and the universe. This sense of health and integration is played out in how we treat each other and how we treat this planet. Magic is just one methodology among many for helping us achieve a better awareness of our place in the universe as well as how we can change that place, for better or worse. And it must be understood that our place in the universe is small…we are not so significant that if we were gone the universe would collapse. But we are significant enough in the sense that our actions and choices play a role in not merely how we live our lives, but also how we pass on that living to our descendents and to the universe we live in. Every action, every choice is an imprint. They are tiny actions, tiny choices, seemingly insignificant in and of themselves, but the repetition of pattern provides strength in numbers and the consequences can be very hard to undo. I realized some few years ago that magic wasn’t doing me much good if my life was headed on a collision course of bad decisions and worse consequences. I realized that true magic wasn’t about reactively doing magic to solve a problem or get a quick fix.


True magic was proactively choosing to change, to recognize the root of my problems and change those problems, while also examining various areas of my life and choosing to do something about them instead of just stumbling along, waiting for whatever might happen next. Magic was spending a year dedicated to working with the element of Earth and consequently learning a lot about how to handle finances effectively as well as how to show others that it could be done. Magic was spending a year focused on love and seeing all the unhealthy patterns of love in my life and then making changes, becoming healthier in how I related to love, while also learning a lot about what this culture doesn’t really show with any kind of relationship: The intimacy of connection with each other, and with our environment. Magic has been doing the internal work, the meditation, the mindful awareness, and the changing of old patterns into new healthier ones, so I don’t need to do so many overt acts of magic to solve the latest crisis in my life. And magic, for me, has always involved learning as much as possible about a wide variety of fields of study such as semiotics, linguistics, multimodality, psychology, neuroscience, etc, and then taking that information and applying it to my spiritual practices so that I could refine how I did magic, while also showing myself and others what it could be used for. For magic to be relevant and significant and of any real benefit to us, it must be balanced with an awareness of other disciplines. The magician needs to be a renaissance person, one who has knowledge on a variety of disciplines and the practices those disciplines contain. S/he must also be able to connect all of those practices together and create an effective synthesis of principles for promoting effective changes, i.e. changes that have the potential to benefit all as opposed to or only a few. Henry Agrippa wrote in The Three Books of Occult Philosophy that the magician who only practiced magic was a dull person who did not really understand magic. To understand magic involved learning about other disciplines and applying those practices to his or her life and the lives of others. Magicians in general need to return to this approach to magic, instead of focusing on hyper-individuation as a display of will. The hyper-individualized person cannot connect with anyone else, because s/he fails to understand or acknowledge anyone else. By learning about a variety of disciplines and also experiencing a variety of people and the struggles they deal with, the magician can begin to consider how magic can be applied to the benefit of all and focus on doing so. Until such a time as that occurs magic will never be rehabilitated. It will instead be the masturbatory wanking of trying to get results, or showing your true will off, or the boasting of finding a parking space. There’s not much change in any of that and it doesn’t do much beyond providing people yet another way to re-act instead of consciously act. For magic to be rehabilitated and beneficial, we must change our way of thinking about it and implementing it, moving away from a model of self gratification, and moving toward a model of conscious awareness and connection with each other and with this universe we live in. When we can do that and share what we develop with others, so that all can benefit, then we will see real change, real magic, and realize its benefit in our lives.


Magic: Is it another four letter word? In my most recent article for reality sandwich, Magic: It’s more than just finding parking spaces, I discussed the stigmas or problem issues that surround the use of the word magic and the subculture of the occult, as well as pointing out that until these stigmas are dealt with decisively magic will never be rehabilitated. One commenter pointed out that it might just be easier to say willful intentionality as opposed to saying magic, because of all the baggage associated with the word. This leads me to ask, “Is magic another four letter word?” Within the occult subculture, it could be argued that magic isn’t a four letter word, but I’m reminded of a recent incident where I overheard a description of a social networking meetup for local occultists. “We get together and hang out. We’ll talk about our jobs, or something fun we want to do, or plan when we’re going to go out and dance. We don’t about magic or any of the magical work we’re doing.” The passion that this was exclaimed with and the emphasis placed on not discussing magic at the meet up demonstrated an odd kind of attitude about magic, even from people who practiced it. It was as if people who came to such an event shouldn’t discuss magic, because it has no place in everyday life. Magic had become a four letter word. While there is a lot of baggage associated with magic, another question I asked in the aforementioned article was about what the benefits of magic are, and in light of that question, I am going to use this article to address what those benefits are and why we shouldn’t treat the word as a four letter word. One of the benefits of magic is that it provides access to alternate ways of knowing. By alternate ways of knowing I refer to ways of experiencing reality that fall outside the conventional approaches to reality, such as religion, materialism, or science. Alternate ways of knowing incorporate techniques such as chemognosis, meditation, sex magic, ritual magic, energy work, but can also draw on disciplines outside of magic. The recent focus on semiotics and memetics is an example where practices from non-occult disciplines have influenced magical practice. Another benefit of magic is that it provides access to a variety of resources that fall outside the traditional spectrum of reality that we’re conditioned to believe in. These resources can include gods, angels, and demons, but also include cultivating natural gifts that we have, which may fall into disuse if not cultivated. A non-linear awareness of space/time, or the conscious manipulation of the physiology of the body is an example of accessing resources that fall outside the traditional spectrum of reality, but another example can be the intentional use of writing or collages to shape reality in a particular manner. By conventional standards it would be argued that writing can’t directly shape reality. However, there are plenty of cases where writing has shaped a person’s life or events. William S. Burroughs and Ernest Hemingway are two examples; one knowingly did it and the other didn’t, with tragic consequences for him. Magic also provides a person the opportunity to find answers to the spiritual questions s/he asks. Praying to a god is one way to find the answer, but the magician can also create the answer by his or her own efforts as well. And magic isn’t just applied to spiritual questions, but also the practical concerns that can arise in living life. Utilizing magic to help you through a financial rough time or for healing a disease would be an example of using it for a practical concern.


One could argue that everything I’ve mentioned above could be filed under willful intentionality, but would most people even understand that or know what willful intentionality meant? Certainly magic has its baggage and is sometimes a four letter word, but there are many associations with it that are positive. Many people have benefitted from practicing magic and incorporating it into their lives. And many people, including yours truly are proud to talk about magic with others, as well as practice it daily, instead of attempting to treat it as something you only deal with during special events or holidays. Willful intentionality doesn’t have the negative associations, but nor does it have the positive associations either. Another comment made to the aforementioned article was that if we were going to rehabilitate magic, it’s not a question of rehabilitating the term, but rather it’s about how we rehabilitate how that term is used. I think this is an accurate point to make, and yet also a semantic one, because really what it points to is the need to rehabilitate the varied definitions of magic. Certainly examining the definitions is important. It provides us an idea of how people understand the term as well as their own agenda for defining it in a particular way. But the application and processes also need to be considered carefully. When we do that, we aren’t just looking at magic from an abstract perspective, but also considering it from an experiential understanding of it. Magic isn’t a four letter word. But how it’s been used and how it is understood has not always portrayed it in the best light. There is a lot of cultural and religious baggage associated with the word and even though it is marginally more acceptable now than it used to be, magic may not ever be free of that baggage. This may not matter to the occult subculture at all, but it does matter if we ever choose to take the concepts and practices of magic and present them to a more mainstream audience. At that point willful intentionality may be the best choice of words we use to explain how those concepts work (or not as I don’t think magic just about an application of will and intent), but in the process we will have to lay out many of the underlying assumptions and beliefs inherent within the word magic. It makes for a semantic challenge, but also necessarily may force us to consider anew just what the benefits of magic are as we share them with a broader audience than just the occult subculture.


Is it really energy? When one word becomes an umbrella term for a variety of experiences The word energy is ambiguous, used as a cover word to describe a set of experiences and sensations, which may not actually be energetic at all. It's a convenient word used to conceptualize those experiences, but at the same time it's a fuzzy word because the experiences that fall under the word energy may not have anything to do with energy. Part of where this ambiguity comes from is associating the word energy with Chi. There's no direct translation of Chi into English and so energy has been used as the word that roughly describes what Chi may or may not be (Bonewits 2007, Yang 2003). Recently as I was doing a breathing exercise to help me work through what would be termed an "Energetic Blockage" I realized that the term wasn't accurate to what I was experiencing. There was a gap between the concept of the energetic blockage and the reality of the experience I was actively involved in. I realized that the term "Energetic Blockage" could be used to describe the experience, but it wasn't really accurate to that experience. The actual experience was an awareness of physical tension in my body that was linked to an emotional issue I've been working on for the last couple of months. As I did my breathing exercise I consciously focused on the physical tension, and specifically on allowing myself to feel it and work through the resultant emotions and thoughts that came up as I felt iti. Eventually I was able to work through the tension to a point where it was no longer physically bothering me. The emotional tension had also died down. I'm by no means finished working through this issue, but for the moment the sensation was no longer prevalent. The breathing exercise I used is a Taoist exercise for dissolving physical and psychological tension in a person's body. Both breath and chi are utilized in the dissolving process, but that doesn't mean energy is involved. In fact, what I felt was involved was a conscious effort to be present with the emotions and thoughts I felt, and a sense of movement in the tension itself. I feel that same movement anytime I'm doing breathing meditations and as such would characterize it as my experience of Chi. I'm not sure that awareness of movement would automatically mean that Chi equals energy however. My point in bringing this up isn't to be overly semantic, though it may seem like I am being just that. Rather, it's to question carefully the words we use to describe the experiences we have. While energy is a convenient term to use, it's also become an umbrella term to describe a wide variety of sensations and experiences. And whether we are using energy in the quantum physics sense of the word or using energy as a biological field of electro-magnetism, or as the mysterious force of chi, when it becomes an umbrella term for all of those experiences and more, then it might be worth considering being more particular about how we use the word and also comparing that usage against the actual experiences we have. The word energy is used in so many different settings that it's not surprising that some occultists are skeptical of the word. My own skepticism comes moreso from the conscious experience I mentioned above, which has prompted me to consider how the energy paradigm may be used as another way of fully being present with the body. If we can take sensations we feel and make them abstract by referring to them as energetic phenomenon, then we can also avoid being


present in the body, and also being present with the emotions linked to those sensations, at least initially. And that may actually be beneficial, given that Western cultures, in particular, are body phobic. Having a word such as energy represent the sensations we feel might then make those sensations easier to deal with on a psychological level. At the same time, when I feel a flush of heat stir in my hands because I'm doing a Taoist exercise that uses Chi, I recognize that a physiological reaction is occurring. The sensations of heat and movement that I'm aware of tell me I'm working with some kind of force or awareness that effects me on the physical as well as metaphysical level. When I do rituals, these same sensations can be felt and indicate that the ritual is occurring. And what I realize is this: Accepting that I feel these sensations in my body allows me to fully integrate my body into magical work. Instead of needing to use an abstract concept to explain what the sensations are, I can simply choose to be present with my awareness of those sensations and accept them as physiological expressions my body is sharing to indicate that all of me is present and focused on this ritual working I'm doing. I do think the word energy has value in metaphysical discussions. I just question how we use the word, and if the use causes people to neglect or ignore an experience they could otherwise have. Taking a moment to just be in an experience without labeling it with a word or explaining it way or analyzing it can be the key to fully allowing a person to come face to face with the moment s/he is in. and welcome what s/he experiences for what it is. Bibliography Bonewits, Isaac & Phaedra. (2007). Real energy: Systems, spirits. and substances to heal, change and grow. Franklin Lakes: New Page Books. Yang, Jwing-Ming (2003). Qigong meditation: Embryonic breathing. Boston: YMAA Publication Center.


Making the Case of Magical Experimentation

I've experimented with magic since I first started practicing when I was sixteen. I'd buy books at the local occult shop, voraciously read them and try the exercises out. Afterwards, I'd think about how I could improve the exercises or change them or experiment with them. I was never satisfied with other people's explanations of how magic worked. I'm still not satisfied with most of the explanations about how magic works, and that includes some of my explanations. That dissatisfaction, as well as an insatiable curiosity drives my desire to experiment with magic. Magic is perceived by some as a spiritual force that complements their religious practices, and by others it is perceived as a practical methodology used to achieve measurable results that improve the lives of the practitioners. Still others think of it as a spiritual practice that allows them to commune with the world and the divine. Beyond all of those perspectives though it is a discipline, a field of study that many people contribute to on a regular basis. The challenge with any discipline is figuring out how you keep it relevant to the times and to the needs of the people. When we look at magic as a discipline, we see that it is relevant through the diversity of the community. Whether it's the reconstruction of a particular culture and its spiritual practices, or the melding of Eastern and Western magical practices, or the evolution of a given tradition as that tradition adapts to the times, there is clearly relevance in magic as a spiritual and practical discipline. So the question may come up: Why experiment with magic, especially if the practices we have already work? Do we really need to fix something that isn't broke? Aren't we just reinventing the wheel? The answer to those questions is simple: Experimentation with magic is how we keep it relevant as a discipline, and how it continues to evolve with the times. Experimenting with magic isn't simply about coming up with new techniques or modifying existing ones. It is choosing to explore what magic can be as a spiritual and practical discipline. It is choosing to be curious about magic and how it fits in the world around us, as well as in our lives. It is asking questions that have no obvious answer. Let me provide two case studies from my own magical practice to illustrate this concept. The first case study involves my work with Neurotransmitters as spiritual entities. Neurotransmitters are chemicals and hormones the brain and body produce as a response to external stimulus. Most people would probably not think of treating them as spiritual entities. I chose to take such an approach, because it seemed like an excellent way to explore the human body as a universe all its own. Additionally, I wanted to work with the neurotransmitters because they are the physiological component of an altered state of consciousness. Learning to work with them as spiritual entities would be useful as a way of learning how to control and cause an altered state of consciousness. The details of that work are in my book Inner Alchemy, but my point in mentioning this as a case study is that no one ever thought to work with neurotransmitters or the bacteria in a person's body as spiritual entities, partially because the awareness of these aspects of our existence is relatively recent, but also because it's not a part of traditional practices of magic. Nonetheless the choice to explore the possibility of working with neurotransmitters as spiritual entities revealed that interacting with them in that manner was


useful for learning more about the body and how it could be usefully incorporated into magical practices. Without experimentation in magic, such exploration would never occur. The second case study involved working with Harry Potter as a magical entity, way back when the movies first came out. I once put together a Samhain ritual, using the four houses of the Hogwarts school for the four corners, with attendees choosing the particular corner/house that best fit their personality/needs. Attendees reported meeting with characters from Harry Potter and getting insights and advice for particular situations in their lives. The magical working wasn't significantly different from a more traditional working. What was different was the inclusion of pop culture characters. Nonetheless this inclusion didn't significantly impact the magical working in a negative way. If anything, the end result was the people attending realized that pop culture could provide some useful inspiration for their magical work. Without experimenting with the idea of integrating pop culture into magic this ritual wouldn't have occurred, nor would many others that have since occurred. What this working really reveals is that what makes magic work is understanding the underlying principles of magic. If you understand those principles and can use them effectively, what you choose to add to the working can be just as effective, even if it isn't as traditional. Experimentation allows us to expand on Traditional Models The case studies mentioned above are just two examples of how magic can be experimented with, but consider as well that if we are to keep magic relevant as a discipline, we necessarily need to experiment and to keep up with the evolution of the world. This means we need to challenge the traditional paradigms of magical practice, or at least change some of those paradigms. In my own work this has involved exploring a different model of elemental magic. The traditional perspective on elemental magic is that there are five elements. In the West, the elements are Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Spirit, while in the East they are Wood, Earth, Metal, Water, and Fire. While the traditional model is a useful model for working with elemental energy, it is still an outdated model. The Western perspective of elemental magic is based off of Aristotelian definitions of the world, which were used to explain and categorize the world over 2,500 years ago. To say that the world has changed and evolved since then is an understatement, and yet as magicians we still rely on a system of categorization that is outdated. It can be worked with and it can be useful, but why not expand on it and explore what else might be considered elemental magic? I chose to experiment with elemental magic when I started doing a yearlong Elemental Balancing Ritual. It's a ritual that involves the invocation of an element into your life, so that you can work with it over the course of the year, in order to bring balance with that elemental energy and your life. Balance, in the context of this ritual, means that you working with the elemental energy and the behavioral attributes it represents in order to balance that energy and behavior in your life. For example, the element water is traditionally associated with feelings and emotions so if you feel disconnected from your emotions, you might work with water to develop a better relationship with your emotions. Of course you'll also pick up other aspects of water while doing the work, such as learning to be more flexible or discovering the value of stillness.


I chose to start this balancing ritual in October, because of Samhain which marks the end of the year, in a spiritual sense, and also because my Birthday is in October, but anyone doing this ritual could start it at any time of the year. I'll explain more about how to do the actual work below. I've also described this work in my book Inner Alchemy. When I initially developed this ritual, I applied the traditional model of elemental magic to it, which means working with the five elements. I looked at my life and asked myself where I felt there was a lack of balance and what elemental force would correspond to that lack of balance. I chose to work with Water because I felt that I had a lot of passion, but a disconnect from my emotions. It was a good choice and that first year's work helped me grow as a person and connect with my emotions much more meaningfully than I had before. However, at the end of the first year, what I needed to work on didn't have a traditional elemental correspondence. I'd become a hermit, while in graduate school and I really didn't know how to socialize with people and I didn't feel comfortable doing it. The closest traditional element I could think to work with was Air, but that element didn't feel right. So I began to think about what did feel right and came up with Sound. It's not a traditional element, but I realized that I shouldn't confine myself to traditional elements for the sake of being traditional. It could be just as viable to work with an element that wasn't traditional, but nonetheless is an element that affects our lives. I define an element as a force of nature that moves people and the world at large. It's a force that is essential to life. Sound, as an element, fit that definition. It's something we experience every day, and even something we help to make. It is something that moves, not only in what we can hear, but what we can't hear. Most importantly, for my purposes, it was an element I could identify with, when it came to learning to be social again. In the years since I've worked with Earth, Love, Emptiness, Identity, Space/Time, Fire and I am now working with Movement. The majority of these elements are not traditional elements, but they are elemental powers that are defined by the modern context of our time. By choosing to extend elemental magic to more contemporary elements, I'm not disrespecting the traditional model of elemental magic, so much as recognizing that there is room for evolution and the possibility to connect with elemental energies that all of us can work with. In future entries for this magazine I'll provide other case studies and ideas for experimentation with magic (including an article on how to do the elemental balancing ritual). There is so much to explore with what magic can do, and how it can draw from other disciplines. Experimentation with magic is essential for it to continue to evolve as a discipline, and there are many possibilities for experimentation. We have but to cultivate our curiosity and keep our minds open to those possibilities so that we can turn them into reality.


About Taylor Ellwood

Taylor Ellwood is the author of ‘Magical Identity’, ‘Space/Time Magic’, ‘Inner Alchemy’, ‘Multi-Media Magic’, and ‘Pop Culture Magic’. He is the Managing Editor of Megalithica Books, the non-fiction imprint of Immanion Press. He is also the founder and teacher of The Way of the Magician Mystery School. You can find him on the web at the following: http://www.magicalexperiments.com http://www.twitter.com/magicexperiment http://www.facebook.com/magicalexperiments The Way of the Magician Mystery School The Way of the Magician is a Mystery School that I have developed to formalize and improve on the work that I have written about in my books. It is a fusion of Western magical practices and Eastern mystical practices, with an emphasis on creating a balanced approach to doing internal work for spiritual and personal growth, while also doing practical workings to solve problems and improve the quality of your life. The Way of the Magician is designed to supplement and enhance any spiritual work you are doing in other magical traditions while still presenting a unique perspective and approach to magical work. What makes the Way of the Magician Mystery School unique is the integration of modern disciplines and cultural studies into your spiritual work. I think it is important for magic, as a discipline and spiritual practice, to evolve with the times, and part of this is done by exploring how other disciplines such as neuroscience, rhetoric, literacy, etc. can be meaningfully applied to spiritual practices. If you would like to learn more about available classes at The Way of the Magician Mystery School, please visit http://www.magicalexperiments.com/way-of-the-magician/


Taking the Path of Least Resistance in Magic by Taylor Ellwood

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