Meditation – A Guide

Introduction

I want to put up some articles about channeling and mediumship. I’ve stayed away from these articles because most of the techniques involve deconstructing boundaries, and that can be problematic and psychologically harmful if not handled correctly, especially when you’re trying to develop a one size fits all method instead of tailoring the instruction to a particular person. There’s also a fear that someone might try to ‘teach’ my methods, but with additions and omissions for the sole purpose of exploiting someone sexually. I prefer giving this information out on a person-to-person basis, that way I can give the person the exact information they need and make sure they understand it and aren’t harmed by it. However I now want to put the information out there for people, because I haven’t been able to find any good publicly available instructions, and these are very cool things that people want to try, and, especially in regards to channeling, these are extremely valuable tools for acquiring spiritual information.

Also a lot of jack-offs, and this is especially true in the New Thought Movement but it happens in other places as well, make themselves into spiritual leaders because they’re supposedly channeling basic spiritual information from something. I say supposedly because they could be channeling this stuff, but it’s all so basic and has been written down so many times already that they could just be reading books. One thing that I never see the jack-offs teaching, at least to all their followers, is how to channel, which is the one really important spiritual thing they’re doing. For these leaders being a spiritual guru with dependent followers, and all of the emotional and financial validation that comes along with that, is more important than being an actual spiritual leader and teacher and passing down their spiritual techniques to empower others. That’s assuming they even know how to channel and aren’t, like I said, just reading books and slightly rewording things like a teenager plagiarizing Wikipedia for their English paper. Either way, I fucking hate those people, and I want to make it so anyone who wants to learn how to channel can.

The problem I have is that when I talk about intermediate and advanced subjects, like Channeling and Mediumship, or really any magic that isn’t basic beginner exercises and theory, I always come back to the same bit of advice: ‘If you’re having trouble with this, spend more time practicing Energy Manipulation, Meditation, and Visualization.’ Those three things are the basic pillars of magic. Every kind of magic, whatever it is, requires you to have some degree of competency in those three things. Getting better at any of those things will make all of your other magic stronger. If you’re just starting out and you don’t know what magic you should be doing, those three things will pay the biggest dividends and make you a better magician faster than anything else. If you’re an experienced adept, it’s still important to practice those things every day, because getting better and better at those things is going to make you even stronger.

I’ve written about Energy Manipulation and I have some very good beginner exercises for it. I’m hoping to expand on that and finish those exercises soon, but even right now there’s enough there to get someone to a point where they can continue to develop on their own. I haven’t posted much about the other pillars, Meditation and Visualization. That’s because there’s already lot of good information out there, and also they’re kind of boring to write about and I’m lazy, but I’m finally doing an article on each before I get into channeling so I have a resource I trust to point folks towards.

If you’ve already been taught meditation, this article might still be useful to you. Most people never get past the early stages of meditation, and so when most people teach meditation, they teach it as if the early stages are all there is to it. If you’ve been doing meditation for a while and you can’t achieve a meditative state almost every time and a trance state a majority of the time, this article can help you figure out what you’re missing.

Preparing For Your First Meditation

The first few times you meditate, you should try doing it under the best possible conditions. You’ll want to make yourself comfortable and eliminate any distractions. What’s comfortable and what’s a distraction is going to be different for everyone, so it’s important to find what works for you instead of following someone else’s guidelines. I’m going to offer some suggestions, but ultimately you have to figure out what you need to be comfortable and free from distraction.

To start you want a space where you’ll be alone and no one will bother you for at least a little while. It’s best if this is a familiar space that you already feel comfortable in. Like maybe your bedroom, or your living room, or outside in your yard if it’s private.

Next you’ll want to be comfortably dressed. For most people this is going to be loose fitting clothes that don’t restrict movement or cut off circulation. Ideally you want clothes that you won’t feel on you. You may feel more comfortable and less distracted in your underwear, in a bathing suit, or completely naked, but if you feel self conscious not wearing enough clothes, or you’re going to stress about someone walking in on you or peeking through a window and seeing you undressed, wear more clothes. Some people find that a heavy blanket, or a comforter, helps with not getting distracted by physical sensations, and it also relaxes them and helps them feel more comfortable. However if you happen to be that rare person that only ever feels at ease in formal business attire, then wear that because it’s what works best for you.

Whatever you decide to wear, make sure it fits the temperature of where you are. You don’t want to feel hot or cold.

As for lighting, you’ll want some light, but less is better. If it’s daytime, draw the curtains or shut the blinds. If you’re outside in your yard, maybe sit in the shade or something and don’t face the sun. If it’s night, dim the lights. A pitch black or near pitch black environment is going to be counterproductive to learning meditation, and that kind of sensory deprivation is going to open up a whole different can of worms spiritually speaking. A lot of people prefer candlelight for meditation.

Finally you’ll want to get the sounds right. You’ll probably want to find someplace quiet. Of course nothing is completely quiet, so what you really want is someplace with no distracting noises. Some people do best with some kind of white noise or maybe nature sounds or some relaxing music. Other people find all that stuff incredibly distracting. The important thing is to find the environment that suits you, whatever it is.

Keep in mind that these are preparations you’ll want to take when you’re first learning how to meditate. You want to give yourself as much of an advantage as you can, because learning how to meditate, and learning how to do it well, can be difficult. Once you get meditation down, the next step is learning how to meditate in situations where you may not be so comfortable, or where there may be distractions. Eventually you’ll want to be able to meditate in any kind of situation you might find yourself in. That might seem difficult and overwhelming when you’re first learning how to meditate, but don’t worry about it. Once you know how to meditate, teaching yourself to meditate quickly or meditate when you’re distracted is a lot easier than learning how to meditate in the first place.

Your First Meditation

For your first meditation find a position that’s comfortable for you. That can be sitting in your favorite chair, on the floor, or lying in bed. Pretty much any position you could potentially fall asleep in. Next close your eyes, and then try not to think about anything. You’re going to get intrusive thoughts, because you’re trying not to think about things, and that’s what happens when you try not to think about things. That’s okay. This stuff takes practice, and this is your first time. Don’t try to fight the intrusive thoughts too hard, because that will just create a cycle that makes the situation worse. Maybe let the thoughts run their course and then move past them. Also try not to feel anything. Try not to be happy, or sad, or angry, or anything else. Just try to be calm and relaxed. If you can’t do that yet, that’s okay.

Just stay like that for a while. Don’t think about anything, but if you are thinking about things, just think about them. Stay like that for as long as you can. The longer you can stay like that, the better. But if you start to feel restless or bored and it ceases to be relaxing and starts to be a chore, then go ahead and stop.

Now that I’ve gone over your first meditation, maybe reread the last few paragraphs once more, than go meditate right now before you read anymore of the article. I know you have the time to get everything ready and do it for at least a little bit, because this is a really long article. If you have the time to read this, you have the time to meditate. If it’s between reading the rest of this article and meditating right now, go meditate, and you can finish reading this later when you have more time.

Seriously, after you finish this paragraph, go meditate! If you can’t get things perfect so you’re comfortable and free of distractions, just make yourself as comfortable and free of distractions as you can right now and meditate. If you don’t meditate right now, you won’t understand the rest of this article, and even if you plan on doing it later, everything I write after this is going to be worthless to you and won’t help you in any way. There’s no point in reading the rest of the article if you aren’t meditating after this sentence ends, so if you’re not meditating you should do something else that’s more productive or fun.

After Your First Meditation

Congratulations on meditating for the first time. Did you reach a meditative state? Did you reach trance? Was it an amazing spiritual experience that completely changed your life and your perception of the spiritual universe? If you answered yes to any of those questions, that’s awesome, but you probably answered no. If you felt relaxed and managed to clear your mind a bit you’re ahead of the curve. If you felt bored, thought you weren’t doing it right, or felt stupid because some guy on the Internet tricked you into sitting still for a few minutes and is trying to pass that off as a significant spiritual experience, that’s how most people feel the first time they meditate. The important thing is you did some practical work today and took the first step to learning meditation.

Having meditated today you’re 1000 times more spiritually advanced than anyone who has never meditated, which from my experience is most of the magical community. You’re 10 to 100 times more advanced than all of the people who have meditated before, but haven’t meditated today, which is most of the rest of the magical community. Your spiritual advancement is now somewhere in the top percentile of the magic community, so you should be really proud of yourself.

Magical Theory of Meditation

So let’s talk about what meditation is and what we’re trying to achieve when we do it. And we’ll start with altered states of consciousness.

The Meditative and Trance States

So there are a lot of different states of consciousness we can be in. The one we’re all most familiar with, because we spend a lot of time in it, is our sober and awake state. This is the state you’re probably in right now, and it’s the one most people use as their reference point when comparing other states. The other state of consciousness everyone’s really familiar with is the dream state. Arguably there are at least two different dream states, the one where you’re asleep and full on dreaming, and the one where your mind drifts off into dreams as you start to fall asleep. Doing drugs or drinking alcohol can also bring you into other various altered states of consciousness.

There are two altered states of consciousness that are achieved through meditation, the meditative state and the trance state.

The meditative state is hard to describe. In fact it’s sometimes hard to even notice you’re having it if you’re not used to identifying it. It’s a state of heightened clarity, focus, and awareness. In a meditative state you may find it much easier to think and draw conclusions. You may also find it much easier to feel energy, both your own and what exists around you. The best way I can describe it is it’s kind of like being in a deep sleep, except you’re awake and not dreaming. I have to point out that I don’t mean you’re actually asleep. You’re awake in every sense of the word. If you’re literally asleep you’re not in a meditative state, you accidentally fell asleep while meditating and are no longer meditating.

Even though it can be hard to identify the meditative state the first time you reach it, it does feel distinctly different from both your normal awake state and your dreaming state. Ultimately you’re going to have to trust you’re instincts a bit, but you should be able to figure out that you’ve achieved it after you’ve done it a few times.

The second state is the trance state, and you reach the trance state after you reach the meditative state. The trance state is very distinct, and unlike the meditative state you’ll probably know it when it happens. The trance state is a state of hyper-awareness, hyper-focus, and hyper-clarity. In a trance state you’ll probably feel very empowered. You’re going to have a much easier time feeling your own energy, and without all the normal emotional and mental barriers and distractions that hold you back and a singular focus, your energy is going to be turned up really high, so much so you’ll probably feel it bursting out of you. Not only will you feel these strong energies bursting out of you, but you’ll also have a lot of control over them.

Much like the meditative state, the trance state is great for thinking things over. It’s also great for doing magic. The heightened awareness that comes with it makes it much easier to see spirits and what the energy around you is doing. All that energy that’s bursting out of you and all of the focus you now have is going to make your magic a lot more powerful, and you’ll be a lot more successful with it. In a trance state it’s not unheard of to find previously unknown reserves of energy that can be tapped into and magical abilities that you weren’t even aware you had.

The meditative and trance states are excellent goalposts for when you’re first starting to learn meditation. Your first goal should be to reach a meditative state. Then try to repeat that success several more times. Next you should try to consistently achieve a meditative state when you meditate. That means that almost every time you meditate you achieve a meditative state, and its an expected outcome of meditation. After that, the next goal should be reaching a trance state, and then you should aim to hit a trance state a few more times, and after that have trance be a fairly regular outcome of meditation. Once you reach that point there’s still a lot of room for improvement, but there’s also a lot of different things you can focus on improving.

The Steps of Meditation

There are five parts, or steps, to meditation. They are Clarity, Awareness, Focus, Self-control, and Trance. Typically you go through them in that order, and it’s usually easiest to do it in that order, but they don’t have to be done in that order. They can happen in any order, and you can skip back and forth between them. You can do a little bit of Clarity, and then a little bit of Awareness, and then come back to Clarity and do that some more. They can also be done simultaneously.

When you’re first starting out, it’s best to try doing them in the easy order first:

Clarity—>Awareness—>Focus—>Self-Control—>Trance

When done in that order, when you do well on one step it will naturally lead to doing better in the next step creating a flow that will make it easier to get to Trance. It’s okay to dedicate an entire meditation session to just one step. The first thing you should be doing is spending your meditation sessions working on Clarity and getting it down. Once you feel like you’re doing well with Clarity, move on to Awareness. Move through each step, and once you have all four down you should naturally hit Trance. If you hit a wall with a step, go back to the beginning and strengthen each of the preceding steps. If you get through the first four and aren’t hitting Trance, start over from Clarity and strengthen each step.

Step 1: Clarity

Put simply, Clarity is the process of clearing your mind. It is typically the only step of meditation that’s taught, and often it’s the only step the instructor knows. It is, however, only the first step in a larger process, and even if you master it, you won’t be seeing the results you should if you never work on the proceeding steps.

There is, of course, an argument to be made that a student only needs to be taught Clarity. Because the steps flow from each other, once the student has mastered Clarity they have the necessary skills to discover and improve upon the proceeding steps and eventually reach Trance. However in practice, as proven by numerous forums, blogs, reddits, and con-men selling spirituality, if you only teach Clarity what you end up with is a bunch of people who think that Clarity is the end goal of meditation, because that’s all their instructor ever told them, or that’s all they read about in a book, and if an authority figure didn’t explicitly state something it can only be because it doesn’t exist. So I’m going to teach all the parts of meditation.

Going back to Clarity, ourselves, or more accurately the bunch of bodies that make us up, is the only tool that we need to do a magical operation. Other tools can be helpful, but we don’t need them, and any kind of magic can be done without those tools. In contrast, we need ourselves to do any kind of magic. Also we suck at being magical tools. Everything affects us, and we in turn pollute our magic with all the crap that’s affecting us. If you’re doing a spell and you think, “Did I leave the oven on?”, that thought is now wrapped into your spell. Even thinking about the spell you’re doing wraps your thought about the spell into the spell. If you’re happy, sad, excited, angry, nervous, whatever emotion you’re feeling, that emotion pollutes the spell as well. There are, of course, steps we can take to lessen the impact of these stray thoughts and emotions and other things that influence our spells, and at the end of the day our spells don’t have to be perfect, they just have to work. If a spell produces the desired outcome, even if it’s sloppy and has some superfluous crap about the state of my oven in it, it’s good enough.

Clarity is us recalibrateing our bodies. What we’re trying to do is bring each of our bodies to a neutral state. Perfect Clarity is the goal, but we don’t need to reach a state of perfect Clarity to achieve Trance. Perfect Clarity is likely impossible to achieve, and if you dedicate yourself to reaching perfect Clarity before moving on to the later steps, you’ll never move on. Instead try to do Clarity well, and once you feel you’re doing it well enough move on to Awareness.

To explain Clarity, it’s easiest to break ourselves down into five bodies, the physical, the astral, the mental, the emotional, the creative, and the spiritual, and explain how we achieve Clarity in each one. And yes, I realize I said five bodies and then listed six. That was intentional. You can, if it bothers you, either count the physical and astral bodies as a single body, or just eliminate the spiritual body from the list. The number of bodies isn’t important, and I’m doing it this way because I have other articles I may write in the future, and I don’t want those articles to contradict this one, because if I do sometime after I’m dead middle-aged armchair magicians will argue about what great secret I was hiding by making the contradiction, or they’ll argue about whether or not everything I’ve ever written is wrong because of one small contradiction they found, instead of doing magic so they might actually know a god damn thing. And nobody wants that.

So anyways, body Clarity both in the order of importance and the order you should work on them:

Mental Body: This is the act of clearing your mind and not thinking about anything. That seems like it should be really easy, but for most people it’s not. It is however something that gets easier with practice. Usually if you try to think about nothing you’ll get an intrusive thought, or a thought about thinking about nothing, or you’ll imagine what nothing is. If you try to push the thoughts out that just makes you think them harder, and think other thoughts about pushing them out, and at that point you’re also expending a lot of energy on what should be an effortless process.

If you’re having trouble clearing your mind, the best thing to do is not focus on the thoughts and just let them play themselves out. Intrusive thoughts become less of a problem when you stop giving them energy by trying to get rid of them. The more you relax yourself and fall into meditation, the less likely it is you’ll have them. With practice it gets easier to clear your mind, and eventually this will be a non-issue. Until then remember, the point isn’t to be perfect. The point is to practice and improve yourself so that you’re always getting better at it.

Some people focus on their breathing or a sound in order to help clear their mind. If you’re really struggling that may help, but it’s going to make the later steps harder and you’ll have to come back later and relearn Clarity in order to get through them.

Emotional Body: You don’t want to be feeling any emotion, you just want to be in a state of emotionless calm. That’s actually a lot easier than not thinking any intrusive thoughts, and it’s especially easy when you’ve already cleared your mind. If you’re really emotional you may need to spend some time calming yourself first, but for most people, especially when you’re meditating in an ideal environment, this one’s usually pretty easy to achieve. This one gets more difficult to do when the environment isn’t ideal, or if you’re already very emotional before you start meditating, and those are things you can work on as you get better at meditation.

Physical Body: If you try to meditate and you find yourself getting distracted by your clothes, or the sounds around you that you didn’t even hear before you started meditating, or you start having itches, that’s your physical body acting up. This is actually an easy one to fix if you’re having problems with it, and it’s easy because all of us are very practiced at overcoming it. When you go to bed at night these same annoying issues can keep you from falling asleep. Figure out how you’re dealing with it when you go to sleep, and apply those same techniques to meditation.

If you’re really struggling with this one, you may have to start thinking about what you can do differently before you start meditating to improve your environment. Would you be more comfortable in different clothes? Would you be more comfortable lying down? Is there a source of noise you can eliminate so you can focus better?

Eventually you want to get to the point where none of that crap matters, because you want to be able to meditate in an environment that’s uncomfortable, but the goal for now is just to get to the meditative state, and then the trance state. If you struggle to meditate when you’re uncomfortable, that’s something you can come back to and work on later.

Astral Body: If you’ve also been practicing Energy Manipulation, it’s a good idea to spend some time balancing your energy during meditation and bringing it to a neutral state. If you’re not skilled enough at Energy Manipulation that you can easily do that, don’t worry about it. Clearing your mind of thoughts and calming your emotions is going to naturally balance your energy to a degree anyways.

Creative Body: This mother fucker is the reason you’ll never achieve perfect Clarity. The Creative Body is a doer, it’s about what you’re doing. If you’re meditating, you’re not doing nothing, you’re meditating, and the better you’re meditating the more your meditating. It’s a good lesson that the endgame isn’t achieving perfection, the point is to aim for perfection to constantly improve ourselves even though we know we’ll probably never get there. To get what Clarity you can out of the Creative Body, do as little as possible when you meditate, and expend as little effort as possible on meditating and anything else you’re doing.

Spiritual Body: If you’ve got all the other bodies doing well, this one will naturally take care of itself, so you don’t really need to worry about it.

Step 2: Awareness

The second step is Awareness, both External Awareness and Self-Awareness. Once you’ve achieved Clarity in all of your bodies, Awareness becomes much easier to achieve. It’s almost a natural consequence of Clarity.

By External Awareness, I mean the energies, and maybe spirits, that are flowing around you, how it feels to exist in a physical space, as opposed to when you dream (or astrally project if you’ve done that), and just the general way the area feels.

By Self-Awareness I mean being able to feel the energies flowing inside of you, how it feels to be you and to exist and be meditating, how it feels in your mind and your body especially now that they’re in a state of clarity.

In addition to External Awareness and Self-Awareness, you should also be able to feel how your internal energies and the external energies around you are interacting with each other.

To achieve Awareness, all you have to do is sit there, and while maintaining Clarity, feel everything around you.

The trick is you have to just feel everything around you, and not do anything else. Don’t think about how everything feels, don’t think about the energy, and don’t try to identify the energy. You know how I talked about the physical space and how it feels different from dreaming or the astral plane earlier? Don’t think about that, and don’t try to figure out how these places feel different and start comparing and contrasting them. Definitely don’t try to manipulate the energy.

If you do any of that stuff, you’ve messed up your Clarity and you need to go back to step one.

Just feel everything and let the sensation wash over you, don’t interact with it, don’t think about it, don’t analyze it, and don’t think about yourself and how you’re doing it.

That’s the trick, and it can be hard. And the thing is if you try really hard to get Awareness down and not think about these things or pay attention to them and do your best and put your all into it, you’ve fucked it up, because now you’re putting effort into things and your making conscious decisions and you have intent and you’re doing something. If that happens, you have to go back and work on your Clarity again.

If you get Awareness right away and it comes naturally to you, that’s great, you’re awesome, but most of us struggle with this, because it’s a difficult thing to do. It takes time and practice, but you can definitely get there. If you mess it up, you can always go back and do Clarity again, and then give Awareness another try. If no matter how many times you try you still can’t get it, that’s okay, the important thing is you’re practicing it, and if you’re practicing it you’re definitely improving, even if you don’t notice the improvement.

The goal here, with Awareness, is to get to a point where you feel yourself and everything around you spiritually, but you don’t think about it or analyze it, and you also don’t put any effort into not thinking about it and not analyzing it. Pretty much you want to be able to do it without trying so you can preserve your Clarity.

–The Meditative State–

If you do the first two steps well, there’s a good chance you can achieve a meditative state either with just those two steps or with a little bit of work on Focus. If you’re not achieving a meditative state, don’t worry about it, just keep working on all the steps, but be aware that you could potentially fall into it, and if you analyze your meditation after you finish and you believe you were in a meditative state after only doing the first two steps, you probably were.

Step 3: Focus

There’s actually two different ways you can focus in a meditation. The easier way is focusing on a particular thing, and the difficult way is to just focus but not focus on anything in particular. Both have their advantages.

If you’re going into a meditation because you want to ponder something spiritually, like why are red candles good for love spells, you can just go in with that question to ponder it. If you reach Trance, you will probably realize a bunch of new spiritual insights on the subject. Even if you don’t reach Trance, being in a meditative state will give you a lot of Clarity to make new connections and develop new insights. Even if you don’t reach a meditative state, meditation may still help you think about it and reflect on it more clearly.

It doesn’t have to be a spiritual thing either. You can meditate on if your romantic relationship is healthy, if you’re really happy at your job, or if you’re better off buying Skyrim or Witcher 3. In regard to the last one. both games are awesome and both offer things the other doesn’t, so if you like those sorts of games and can afford both and have the time to play them, get both, but if you have to choose go with Witcher 3, and get the GOTY edition because the expansions add a lot of additional content.

The other way, focusing but not focusing on anything, is hard because if you think about doing it or if you put some effort into doing it, you’re failing other parts of the meditation while also losing focus. Additionally you don’t have a specific thing to focus on, which is so much easier, you just have this abstract idea of focusing.

A lot of time the advice is to meditate on a question, even if it’s unimportant, just to help you learn how to focus and retain Clarity while you do it. There’s a couple problems with that approach. First off, if you go into meditation with a question, and you happen to figure out the answer to that question, you have nothing left to focus on and the meditation will probably end there and you’ll miss out on some practice.

One work around to this is using a koan, which are from Zen Buddhism. The most famous is probably, ‘What’s the sound of one hand clapping.’ Koans don’t have direct answers, and even if you do find an answer, they have deep layers that go on and on so there’s still room to continue meditating and expand upon it.

The second issue with going in with a question is it makes focusing easier, and it even makes the next step a little easier too, but it makes getting into Trance harder, and if you aren’t already in a meditative state when you start focusing it makes that more difficult too. You’re making it so Focus is easier to get through, but you’re making the rest of the process more difficult.

Also if you can only get through Focus and reach Trance by using a question, that’s a very big limitation on your ability to meditate and reach Trance.

Much like Skyrim and Witcher 3, both approaches offer advantages the other doesn’t, and I would recommend learning and practicing both in tandem.

The first few times you work on Focus, don’t come in with a question. Try to do it without focusing on anything at all.

After you’ve attempted doing it a few times and have some experience, then try it with a question. It will most likely be easier to do this way, and you’ll hopefully get a better grasp on it. It’ll also force you to learn some new skills with your Clarity and Awareness to get to that stage with a question in your head.

Then take what you’ve learned and go back to trying it without a question. Alternate between the two so you can learn both approaches and get the benefits each has to offer knowing that getting better at one approach will make you stronger when you attempt the other approach.

Ultimately you should aim to be able to achieve Trance with either approach. The approaches have different uses, and either one may be a better fit for a particular situation. Overall, you’ll probably use meditating without a question much more frequently on your spiritual path.

Step 4: Self-Control

Once you have the first three steps down, the next step is to hold on to them as long as possible. Eventually you’ll have intrusive thoughts, or boredom will set in, or your mind will wander, or you might even fall asleep and take a nap. In any case, when those things happen your meditation is broken and you need to go back and do the earlier steps again or end the meditation.

Once you get the first three steps down you may find that you can’t maintain it for very long before you break yourself out of it. Maybe you can only manage for a couple minutes. That’s okay. Just keep meditating and holding it for as long as you can. With practice the amount of time you’re able to hold it will increase.

Step 5: Trance

Trance is the end goal, and when you get there you’re going to feel it and it will be a distinct feeling. All you have to do to get to Trance is get the first three steps down, and then hold it long enough in Self-Control, and you should just slip into it.

You should be hitting a meditative state in the second or third step. If you’re not, you’re weak in at least one of the first two steps, and if you’re not sure which one than work on improving both of them. Likewise if you do the first three steps well, reach a meditative state, and hold it long enough you should reach Trance, and if that isn’t happening it means you’re weak in at least one of the four steps. If you don’t know which one you’re weak in, work on all four.

Coming Out Of Meditation

Before you get really good at meditation, it’s important to learn how to come out of meditation. The first few times you meditate it probably won’t matter and you can just stand up when you’re finished, but once you get better at meditating, and especially once you hit a meditative state, it’s a bitch to come out of meditation wrong. So practice coming out of meditation correctly from the start, and that way once you need it you’ll already have developed the skill.

You want to come out of meditation slowly and carefully, like slowly waking up from a deep sleep.

Stay relaxed, make sure you’re breathing, and slowly let yourself come out of it. One trick is to just concentrate on your breathing and pay attention to how you’re breathing. Pay attention to when you inhale and when you exhale. After you’ve done that for a bit, change your breathing. Take a few deeper breaths and then let it out. When you feel comfortable slowly open your eyes. Take it easy for a few minutes, and then start to move your body and slowly get up.

Give yourself a little bit of time after meditation to relax and be in the moment so you can fully process the meditation you’ve just finished.

If you have to, of course, you can jolt yourself out of a meditation, and if like your house is on fire or something else important is happening you should jolt yourself out of the meditation, it just won’t feel very good.

Eventually, with some experience, you’ll be able to come out of meditations quicker and it won’t feel so bad when you jolt yourself out of one.

Stepping Up Your Game

Now that you’re meditating, here are a few things that might help you improve your meditation a little bit.

Yoga

If you’re able to do it, yoga is a wonderful aid to meditation. Many yoga poses are designed to help energy flow through your body more freely and to clean out your energy a bit. Several common poses, Lotus being the most well-known and probably best, make it easier to get through the steps of mediation if you’re already good at doing the pose.

If holding a pose is causing you discomfort or pain, that’ll negate a lot of the positive benefits of the pose. If a pose hurts, you’ll probably get better results lying down or sitting. However if you can comfortably manage a partial pose, like half-lotus or even sitting crossed-legged, you’ll still get some of the benefits of the pose.

Incense

Incense can help you raise energy, help you redirect your energy, help you with Focus, and just, in general, make meditation easier. You may wish to use incense that you have a particular affinity for, or you may choose one that is tied in to what you’re trying to accomplish with the meditation. A few common ones that are generally good for meditation are sandalwood, vanilla, frankincense, and nag champa.

Although incense can help with meditation, I’d recommend against using it so often that it becomes a crutch. If you’re really struggling with meditation, it can help you break through to the next level, but once you get there you should start working on meditating without incense. Otherwise I would recommend using incense infrequently. Definitely try it out so you have the experience, definitely use it if it’s a special occasion or something really important or you just want a deep meditation that day, but also make sure you’re practicing doing meditation without the help of incense.

Where do you go from here?

So you’ve gotten good at meditation. You always hit a meditative state when you try, and you usually hit a trance state. Maybe you always hit a trance state. Does that mean you’ve mastered meditation?

Well, no. We never master anything, and there’s always room for improvement. In particular the meditative and trance states, although very useful on their own, are far more useful when you can fall in and out of them in seconds and in any environment. If you can fall into trance before doing any kind of magical operation, and hold it for the entire operation, your magic is going to be quite a bit stronger. If you’re just starting with meditation going into Trance like that might seem difficult, and something you’ll only achieve after decades of practice, but once you start getting better at meditation it actually isn’t that hard to learn.

Below are some advanced meditation exercises you can try once you feel like you’ve gotten the hang of meditation.

Speed Meditation

One thing to work on is to practice meditating faster. As you go through the five steps, try to do them as quickly as you can. Set a goal of reaching either a meditative state or a trance state and work on going through the steps as fast as you can to get there. Only count the speedrun as successful if you reach a meditative and/or trance state. If you’re not able to reach an altered state, slow down the individual steps and practice them until you’ve improved some more, and then try to speed them up again.

Meditate While Standing

Instead of lying down, or sitting down, or being in any kind of comfortable position, or gaining the benefits of doing a yoga pose, meditate while standing up. Once you’re able to achieve Trance while standing, try to achieve Trance without closing your eyes. Once you’re able to achieve Trance without closing your eyes, try to achieve Trance while standing with your eyes open. If you want, you can even try to achieve Trance while walking or running.

Meditate While Distracted

Try meditating while you’re distracted. Maybe turn on the TV, or the radio, or go someplace noisy to meditate. Try meditating in uncomfortable clothes. Try meditating in public places with lots of active people around you.

It’s actually difficult to come up with good general exercises for this, because all of us have different things that distract us. Ultimately you’re going to have to come up with your own situations that make you, personally, feel distracted and uncomfortable, and then try meditating in them. Once you become good at meditating in a particular situation, find one that’s even more distracting and uncomfortable.

Multitasking And Meditating

Once you can meditate while standing with your eyes open, and while walking (hopefully also with your eyes open), and while distracted, try meditating while also doing something else. Start with something that you already know how to do and is mostly physical and doesn’t require a lot of thought or attention. Domestic chores, like sweeping, mopping, and scrubbing are good fits. So are physical exercises, like lifting weights or doing sit-ups. From there move on to things that require more thought and attention. Try meditating while playing a video game, while reading a book, while building furniture, while doing a hobby. Then try meditating while doing very complicated things like having a conversation with someone.

Instant Trance Trick

So this is a pretty common trick to drop into Trace very quickly. Unlike a lot of other meditation shortcuts, this one isn’t a crutch and it won’t make it more difficult for you to meditate or get into Trance when you’re not using it. In fact, in my experience, this trick usually opens the practitioner up to a lot of new revelations about how to quickly get into Trance, making it easier to develop other methods.

So in order to do this, you need to be really good at Clarity, because you have to be able to finish Clarity quickly and move right into Awareness. In fact, you need to be pretty good at all the steps to get this to work.

Remember when I talked about feeling all that energy during Awareness? What you’re going to want to do is let that energy wash over yourself and lose yourself in it. Now remember when I said each step of meditation naturally leads into the next step, and there’s a flow to it? If you have all the steps down, and you do this right, the forward momentum of the flow of meditation should naturally push you into Trance without much effort.

You want to practice doing this a lot: Feel the energy —> Go to Trance / Feel the Energy —> Go to Trance, ect.

After you’ve done it a bit, it should be happening pretty fast. The next thing you want to do is setup a metaphysical trigger. Basically when A happens, you automatically do B.

There’s a few different ways to go about this depending on how experienced you are with magic. One way is to just practice this frequently, like several times a day, and to always push yourself into Trance as soon as you feel the energy. Eventually you’ll internalize the process like with muscle memory.

The easier way is to just hide a trigger in yourself so that when you feel the energy, you do the process. It’s pretty much putting a strong trigger in the back of your head so you never think about it, and it sets your metaphysical bodies to do X whenever Y happens.

I don’t want to get into an indepth explanation about how to set up a metaphysical trigger, because even though I know how to do it, it’ll take me months to figure out how to explain it from scratch, and I want to get this article posted.

If you know how to set a trigger, you should already understand what I’m talking about, and if you don’t know how to do it, you might be able to figure it out from what I said. If you can’t figure it out, just use the first method.

Once you have that down, the next step is learning some muscle memory. Whenever you feel energy, or a spike in energy, drop into meditation and do Clarity. And this is why I say you have to be really good at Clarity. You want to be able to go from not meditating, to meditating, to finishing Clarity in less then a second. Ideally you want to do all of that in a lot less than a second. And you’re going to want to be able to do it while you’re standing up, while you’re distracted, while you’re doing other things.

Putting all of it together you should end up with a process where energy rises, or there is unfamiliar or aggressive energy maybe, and by muscle memory you drop into meditation and complete Clarity in less than a second, then you feel all the energy more intensely in Awareness, and that triggers you and you’re in Trance.

Here’s the fun part. Typically when you do a magical operation, one of the first things you do, if not the very first thing, is raise energy. If you’re at a public ritual, if it’s being done right, there should be a lot of energy around. If you’re about to be attacked spiritually, typically you’ll feel some extra or aggressive energy first. If you’re doing energy manipulation, you’re probably going to start by feeling out the energy. If you start talking about or even thinking about spiritual topics, a lot of times energy will just start rising up.

You’ve now trained yourself so that just about any time something magical is happening around you, even if you’re the one doing it, you immediately slip into Trance.

Does Medication Limit Magical Ability?

 

Will taking medication limit my magical ability?

This is a question that gets asked a lot, and if you’re not taking daily medication, it’s difficult to understand how taking meds long term affects magical ability. The short answer is no, taking meds isn’t going to limit your magical ability. You may need to do magic differently because of your meds, and you may need to develop some new skills as well, but that shouldn’t be big deal. Adapting and learning new skills are essential to advancing as a magician anyways, and if you’re not up to doing that your magical ability is already pretty limited. In fact, long term, proper medication will probably make you into a stronger magician.

That’s true if you’re taking meds for physical issues, like high cholesterol or hypertension, or if you’re taking meds for mental health reasons, like depression or anxiety.

Having a doctor or mental health care professional tell you that you need to take medication, or recommend that you should take medication, can be scary, because it can seem like they’re asking you to give up part of your spirituality to be healthy, to be happy, or to not die. Assuming we don’t die young, almost all of us will eventually have a health condition that can be treated with daily medication. For most of us that’s going to happen when we’re middle-aged, a few of us will be lucky enough to make it into our golden years before it happens, and some of us are going to have health issues that will need treatment much earlier in life.

Even if you aren’t taking medication right now, you probably have some idea how it will affect you magically. Almost all of us have been drunk at some point after we started practicing, and we know what happens when we do magic while intoxicated. A lot of us have also been prescribed some strong drugs for short term illnesses, and I’m sure quite a few people are taking other drugs for recreational and spiritual purposes. I’ll touch on drug use for spiritual purposes at the end, but that’s really not the point of this article.

When we do drugs, be it for treating an illness or for something else, it usually affects our magic in one of four ways.

The first way it can affect us is it can open us up to a spiritual experience. Like I said I’ll go into more detail about that at the end, because it’s not why I’m writing this.

The second way it can affect us is it doesn’t affect us, or at least it has no noticeable affect on our ability to do magic. For most people this is the case with a lot of OTC medications like aspirin, pepto-bismol, ect., and is probably the case for a lot of prescription medications as well. This is a best case scenario where you can take a medication and be as strong of a magician as you ever were without having to change anything.

The third way it can affect us is it can dull our abilities. We can still do magic, but it’s harder. It’s like when you increase the weight on a machine at the gym. You’re still doing the same motions and it’s still having the same affect, but it’s a lot more difficult. Focusing and concentrating may also be more difficult. This is actually how alcohol affects me.

The fourth way it can affect us is it can make it more difficult to interpret magical information and direct our magic at a target. You may still be able to sense energy, but you might have more difficulty than normal figuring out what kind of energy it is, or where exactly it’s coming from. You may still be able to cast a spell, but you might have more difficulty getting it to hit the intended target. If doing magic sober is like firing a gun to shoot a target, this is like firing a gun to shoot a target while blindfolded. This is how opioids like Vicodin affect me magically.

If you want to get drunk every once in a while, or if you’re ill and you need to take medicine for a few days, it’s fine to take a short break from your spiritual practices and spend a day or a week being less than 100%. When you’re ready to end your break, you’ll be as good a magician as you ever were. If you’re going to have to take meds every day forever, or for the foreseeable future, that’s when it becomes an issue.

As a side note taking a prescribed medication properly dosed and monitored by a health care professional is different from having a substance abuse problem or self-medicating. I’m not dealing with the later in this article and as far as spirituality and magic are concerned the challenges would be different. I’m bringing this up because if you do have experience with substance abuse while practicing magic, the situation, and how you should deal with it, is different than taking daily meds.

So how do we deal with having to take our medicine?

Our most important magical tools, and the only ones we need, are our bodies. We all have a few different bodies. We of course have a physical body, but we also have an astral body, and a mental body or HGA, and there are lower realm equivalents, and there are even higher bodies as well.

Our bodies are imperfect tools. Training ourselves magically so we can do more powerful magic is all about getting our bodies into a more perfect state. Out of all of our bodies, our physical body is the worst. It has specific spiritual purposes, and it is at times necessary, but it is the most fragile, volatile, and temperamental of all our bodies, and it has some very low spiritual ceilings.

Our bodies are connected together in a chain, and the lower bodies are dependent on the higher bodies, but the converse isn’t true. Our mental and physical bodies interact with each other through our astral body. If you remove the astral body, the physical body can’t survive, and if you limit a person’s physical body from accessing their astral body you’ve magically neutered them and done a kind of binding. However the same isn’t true of their mental body. A person’s mental body can survive without their astral or physical body, and even if its access to them is limited it’s still operating at 100%.

Our physical body is also at the bottom of the chain. You can remove the physical body, and all of the other bodies are still there and operating as well as they always have.

A lot of things spiritually affect our physical body, like if we’re sick, if we’re tired, what we’ve eaten, if we haven’t eaten, and a lot of other things, including drugs and medications we’re taking. Drugs and medications, however, don’t affect the higher bodies, at least not directly, and therein lies the trick.

When we start doing magic we use our physical body a lot. We store all of our magical knowledge in our stupid meat brain and rely on its logical abilities even though there’s a pretty low upper limit to how much it can accurately remember, and it has a lot trouble just comprehending higher and more abstract metaphysical concepts, and that’s assuming it can even understand the concepts at all.

Early on we also tend to rely on our physical body to focus most of our magic. Sometimes we need to use our physical body to a degree, because it’s our best connection to the physical realm, and a lot of magic is meant to affect the physical realm. When we first start out though we usually use it as the primary body, and sometimes sole body, doing all of our magic. It’s the body we’re most comfortable with, and it’s why ritual magic is the easiest magic to learn even though it’s not the easiest magic to do or the most effective.

As we become better magicians and grow, when we do magic we start taking the jobs that our physical body is performing, and we start passing them on to our other bodies, because they’re more capable of doing them, because they have higher ceilings, and because they are less volatile and temperamental. Even if we don’t intend to do this, even if we don’t understand we’re doing this, we still naturally do this as magicians, and if we don’t we end up being very limited in our abilities.

If you want your magic to be 100% while you’re doing drugs or taking a medication, you have to learn to push jobs off of your physical body and on to your other bodies. Those bodies won’t be affected by drugs or medication, so your abilities won’t be dulled, and you’ll be able to interpret and direct your magic correctly.

If you’re not taking meds right now but you want to practice this, one way is to work on it the next time you get a little drunk. You’ll still have your reflexes impaired and your speech may slur, but you should be able to keep your wits about you, think straight, and not lose your inhibitions. The trick is to have one of your other bodies, like your astral or mental body, take over the thinking work.

Another way to practice is to work with altered states. Practicing meditation will help. Practicing lucid dreaming will help.

Honestly though, once you start taking a medication at the same dosage consistently for a while, you’ll almost certainly start to develop the ability to push off work to the other bodies, and you’ll probably be back to your old magical self in no time. It’ll probably take about 2 months to be 100%.

But how does that make me a stronger magician?

The condition of your physical body is going to have a direct impact on how well you can do magic, especially when you’re doing magic that’s partially reliant on your physical body. Unfortunately age is only going to wear down your physical body, and things are going to get worse as you get older. However if something’s wrong with your physical body and it can be treated with medication, treating the issue and becoming healthier will make you a stronger magician.

Mental health issues can be even worse. Things like anxiety disorders and depression originate in your physical body, but they can impact your other bodies as well. Unwanted emotions and negative thought patterns can very easily seep into your magic and completely disrupt what you’re trying to do, even if you’re not using your physical body to do it.

If medication helps you balance your emotions and control them, it will put you in a position where you’ll be a much better magician.

If you have more severe mental health issues, specifically ones that cause hallucinations or delusions, you’re probably much more capable of having a genuine spiritual experience. However those kinds of mental health issues can make it very difficult to interpret exactly what is happening spiritually, or even if it is a genuine spiritual experience, let alone control it. They also make you much more likely to develop self-destructive beliefs and fall into spiritual pitfalls that will ultimately hinder your growth, even you do have a lot of early success.

Being on a treatment plan, which may involve medication, can give you a foundation that will help you better interpret what is happening spiritually and understand its deeper meaning so you can grow as a magician.

What about spiritual drug use?

Spiritual drug use is semi-related to this, so I might as well go over it.

To start, most people who use drugs for spiritual reasons are actually doing drugs for recreational reasons. Acid and shrooms are fun to do. Salvia and peyote sound cool and in some places in the US they’re legal. If you want to do drugs because they’re fun and cool, or they seem like they might be fun and cool, then just do them for that reason. If you want to be a magician, at least be self aware enough to admit to yourself why you’re doing drugs and don’t believe your own bullshit about it being a spiritual experience.

The thing certain drugs are best at is opening you up to have a spiritual experience. If you’ve been doing magic for a while you already know how to open yourself up and have a spiritual experience. You already know how to induce an altered state for spiritual purposes without using drugs. The folks who will benefit the most from taking drugs to open themselves up spiritually are also the people who are least likely to seek out drugs for spiritual purposes. If everything works out just right, an acid trip can turn a devout atheist into an ardent believer of metaphysics. It can be the push they need to start their spiritual journey. Also if everything works out just right, an acid trip can turn an ardent believer of metaphysics into an ardent believer of metaphysics that’s also tripping on acid.

The problem with these drugs is that they’re opening you up to a metaphysical experience, but they’re also hindering your ability to do magic and properly interpret that experience. It’s great for helping you start your spiritual journey, but after that it’s not going to be very useful.

If you really want to get the full spiritual effect for experienced magicians, you essentially have to do the same thing you would do if you were taking meds. You have to train yourself to push off jobs on to your other bodies so you’re with it enough to fully interpret what’s happening. That’s a lot more difficult than with meds, in part because you probably don’t want to do something like acid every day for months to get good at doing magic while under the influence, and I would recommend against doing something like that.

You can train yourself without doing it every day, but it will be more difficult, and with drugs as powerful as the ones we’re talking about, you’re probably going to have to do them a whole lot before you get really good at it.

It would honestly be much easier to work with things like meditation, trance, astral projection, and lucid dreaming to learn how to induce altered states in yourself and have spiritual experiences without using powerful psychedelics, and it would be much easier on your body and mind.

Final Words

Going back to taking meds and being a magician, there are a lot of spiritual benefits to taking the meds you need under the supervision of a doctor so you can be physically and mentally healthy. The spiritual drawbacks to taking your meds can be mitigated with a small amount of work and in a relatively short amount of time.

There are valid reasons for not taking your meds. The side-effects might not be worth it for you, they might not be effective for you, or you might think that you will benefit more from a different kind of treatment that doesn’t involve medication. If you’re in the US, you may not be able to afford the medication you need. However there aren’t valid spiritual reasons for not taking your meds. The cost vs benefits in regards to spirituality are heavily weighted towards taking your meds.

1 Lesson Correspondence Course

“Put me in coach, I’m ready to play, today, look at me, I could be, centerfield.”

So you want to be a magician. If you’re not a magician, I assume that’s why you’re reading my blog. Maybe you haven’t found the right group, or the right teacher. Maybe you can’t afford one of those other correspondence courses. Maybe you’ve tried other systems, but it’s too difficult to invest six months or a year or three years to a system before you see results. You’re in luck because I’ve come up with a 1 lesson correspondence course that will make you a magician. I’m giving it away free, so all it’ll cost you between a quarter and two dollars in supplies. You don’t have to study. You don’t have to learn protection techniques or magical theory. You don’t need a teacher and you don’t need a group. All you have to do is read this one post, follow these instructions, and tomorrow morning you will be a magician.

If you haven’t yet done a spell, if you’ve never performed a magical operation, even if you’ve never seen a ghost or had a psychic premonition, what I’m offering right now is the key to your spiritual attainment. Whatever you want to do or become spiritually, it all starts right here, right now, and all you have to do is want it.

Right now you’re being given a choice. You can choose to become a magician today. If you chose that, then today you’ll start on your spiritual path, whatever that may be. Whatever it is you want spiritually, you’ll find it on that path. Whether that’s doing magic, seeing ghosts, finding your higher self, gaining enlightenment, flying on a broom stick, or whatever else you want spirituality to be.

If you choose not to become a magician today, I don’t know why you’re reading my blog, or any magical blogs or books. You should give up, save yourself some time and money, and not waste the time of legitimate teachers and group members. If you aren’t yet a magician and you don’t become one today, I have very little faith that you will ever become a magician.

Magicians are defined by their actions. They do things. They also tend to jump right in and do things. They don’t wait until they’ve studied enough, until they’ve learned the right techniques, until their success or safety is assured, or put things off until tomorrow. Magicians get an idea for some magic in their head, and then they go out and do it.

If you put off doing this today, you will probably never do it. If you want to wait until you’re ready, you will never be ready. If you want to be a magician, if you want to be a spiritual person, just take this first step, and everything else will come to you.

I implore anyone reading this who has never cast a spell, or who hasn’t cast a spell in a long time, to change that and become a magician today. I want people to be magicians. I want other people to find their spiritual attainment. So please, do this for yourself, and make yourself, spiritually, into what you want to be.
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So you’re still reading, so I assume you’re at least thinking about seeing this through. You might be wondering how you can be a magician. It’s easy. A magician is someone who does magic. If you do magic, you’re a magician. The wonderful thing about magic though is that once you start doing it, everything else will start to fall into place. You’ll be having spiritual experiences, which will teach you about the metaphysical universe, and then you’ll have practical knowledge to apply to theory. This will make you a stronger magician who can do more, which means you’ll have even more spiritual experiences, and those will teach you even more about the metaphysical universe, giving you even more practical knowledge to apply to theory.

You’ll begin a cycle that will make you more and more powerful through out your entire life, and even into your afterlife.

All you have to do to put everything in motion is do one spell tonight. That will start the chain. I suggest trying to do magic as often as you can. You can easily do one of the spells you’re going to do tonight every night if you want to. Or you can experiment with other spells, maybe even your own. You don’t have to commit to all this right now though. Right now all you have to commit to is doing one spell.

I figure some of things people want are sex, money, and power. I think most people want at least one of these things. So I’ve devises four simple spells to help you attain sex, money, and/or power.

Will these spells work? That depends on you. The magical theory is solid. If you do them well enough, the spells will work. They might not though. Don’t get discouraged if they don’t work on the first try, or if they never work for you. It might take a few tries, or it might take a different kind of spell to see results. Just keep on trying until something finally does work, and always perform these spells with a positive attitude, never giving up faith that this time it will work.

Right now the important thing isn’t results. Right now the important thing is to be doing magic. Even if it doesn’t work, it’s still a first step on the journey to becoming an adept, and even a horribly bad novice magician is still a magician, which makes them much more spiritual than someone who isn’t a magician.

So, four spells, pick the one you like. All of these spells require a candle. I suggest a new white pillar candle that will burn for a few hours. That’s just a suggestion though. Feel free to use any kind of candle you want, can afford, or happen to have on hand. If it burns too long, you can always just put it out. You’ll also need a lighter, and something to put the candle on, preferably a candle holder. The prosperity spell also requires some pocket change, and the glamour spell works best with a mirror.

I also suggest taking a nice relaxing shower prior to doing any of these spells. If that isn’t possible, that’s okay, it’s just a suggestion. A quiet, dark place where you won’t be disturbed is also ideal, but not necessary.

Once you’re ready pick your spell and get to work. You may want to copy your spell into a text editor and print it out in case you need a reference during the spell.

Spell 1: Making Yourself Pretty

This spell is a basic glamour + projection. The idea is to make yourself more attractive, so more people will be interested in you.

This spell works best if you haven’t pleasured yourself lately. If you have, don’t worry, you can still do the spell.

First things first, take off all your clothes, including your socks and underwear. I didn’t include clothes in my $2.00 of required tools, and clothes can be expensive. This will also get you into a magical mindset, and it may even help you get used to experiencing new things and being able to still work magic under those conditions. Don’t worry, it’s a solitary ritual, so no one will see you. Except your gods. And any spirits that happen to be around. And any one who may astrally project or remote view you. Actually, unless you’re a never-nude, not being seen naked isn’t really an achievable goal anyways.

Hold the candle in your hand and look into the mirror, and focus on your better physical qualities. Figure out the things that make you attractive. Spend a few minutes (like five or ten) looking into the mirror, and thinking of yourself as an attractive person. Be attracted to yourself. Ignore your flaws, or any parts of yourself that make you unattractive.

The goal of a glamour shouldn’t be to give yourself specific attributes, like six pack abs or larger breasts. That doesn’t really work, and there’s no telling if a potential mate will even want that anyways. The goal is to put an aura of attractiveness around yourself, and then the person looking at you will fill in the blanks to make you attractive.

After you finished that, sit down with your candle. Put your hands on either side of the candle, bow your head down, and close your eyes. Say out loud, “Let what I think and what I feel leave me and enter into this candle.”

Now start thinking about either love or sex. Remember what it feels like to be in love, or even to like someone and have a crush on them. Think about how wonderful it is to think about them and spend time with them. Think about some sexual fantasies and things that turn you on. All the while hold the candle in your hands, and try your best to think about the candle. If you can, visualize these thoughts going into the candle.

I suggest spending five to ten minutes on this.

Place the candle on its candle holder.

Say out loud, “As it burns, let all that is within this candle come to be with me. Once all that is within this candle has come to be in me, let it come off of me as the heat comes off the flame.”

Light the candle. Spend about five minutes staring at the candle and feeling whatever it might be giving you. After that, go about doing whatever you want to do that night while the candle burns.

The next morning you may want to repeat the mirror ritual without the candle, but you don’t have to. For the first half of your day, maybe the entire day, you may notice people looking at you a little more lustfully.

Spell 2: Bringing Yourself a Lover

Chance encounters with people you find attractive are great, but they’re so chancey. There’s no guarantee that you’ll meet someone when you go out tomorrow, and very few ways to increase your odds. Maybe you would have more luck at a singles bar, but the love of your life might just be doing their grocery shopping tomorrow. This spell is designed to bring about a chance encounter with a potentially special someone. After that it’s up to you, since the spell doesn’t offer any help beyond that.

To start, take off all your clothes, including your socks and underwear. I didn’t include clothes in my $2.00 of required tools, and clothes can be expensive. This will also get you into a magical mindset, and it may even help you get used to experiencing new things and being able to still work magic under those conditions.

Once you’re naked, stand up straight, close your eyes, and say out loud, “I am a magnet, the person I want will be drawn towards me.” Repeat this for a total of five times. Louder is better, but don’t yell or scream. If you think you might be overheard, you don’t have to say it loud enough to be heard.

Next sit down with your candle. Place each of your hands on either side of the candle. Bow your head down and close your eyes. Think of all the traits you want your boyfriend or girlfriend to have. Think of the different physical attributes you would find attractive. Imagine all these things combined together into a dream person who would be your new boyfriend or girlfriend. While doing this try to think of the candle. Imagine all of these thoughts entering into the candle. If you can, visualize these thoughts, and your dream lover, leaving you and entering the candle. Do this for five to ten minutes.

Place the candle on to the candle holder. Say out loud, “Let another lonely heart, like the one described within my mind, be drawn to me. Let this candle burn, and in doing so bring us together.”

Light the candle.

Stand up straight, close your eyes, and say out loud five more times, “I am a magnet, the person I want will be drawn towards me.”

Spend a few minutes staring at the candle while it burns. See if you can feel anything, like the universe twisting around and coming together around you to offer you an opportunity.

Now go about your business for the rest of the evening and let the candle burn. You may wish to repeat that last part of the ritual about being the magnet again in the morning. If all went right with the spell, you may find yourself having a chance encounter with someone special.

Spell 3: A Simple Prosperity Spell

Maybe you’ve already found the love of your life, so those other spells aren’t going to be all that useful to you. But all of us could use a little extra spending cash, so here’s a spell to help make you part of the 1%.

In addition to your candle, you’re going to need some pocket change for this spell. Try to get between five and ten coins, and ideally have at least one of each.

Now that you got your pocket change, you aren’t going to need your pockets anymore, so take off all your clothes, including socks and underwear. I didn’t include clothes in my $2.00 of required tools, and clothes can be expensive. This will also get you into a magical mindset, and it may even help you get used to experiencing new things and being able to still work magic under those conditions.

Sit down. Put your money in your left hand and make a fist. Hold the candle with your right hand. Put your arms at your side, and raise your hands so they’re level with your head. Close your eyes. Say out loud, “Let these two things be as one. Let this candle be as money, and make me richer and bring prosperity. Let this money be as the candle, released into the universe.”

With your hands still raised, and your eyes still closed, imagine the money coming out of your hand and entering the candle. If you can, imagine it entering your hand, traveling through your arm and across your chest, and exiting out your other hand into the candle. Then imagine the candle burning, and showering coins into the universe around you. Finally imagine the candle burning, and coins showering out, and being drawn to and entering your body.

Continue these visualization for five to ten minutes. When you’re about to finish, bring your hands together, putting your left fist, holding the money, against the left side of the candle. If you can, take a minute or two to imagine all of your thoughts and imaginings from the last five to ten minutes leaving your mind and entering the candle.

Place the candle on the candle holder. Say out loud, “Burn and bring me prosperity, and riches for a day.” Light the candle.

Spend five to ten minutes staring at the candle. See if you can feel the candle doing anything to you, specifically enchanting you with a prosperity spell. If you can’t that’s okay.

The next day you’ll hopefully either find or come into some extra money. It’ll probably just be spare change, but it’s still money, and if you want to develop your own prosperity spell, the basic concept is the same, you just have to think bigger.

Spell 4: Feel the Magic

Maybe you’re content with the material aspects of your life. Maybe you’ve done the first three rituals already, so you have the love of your life and you’re piggy bank is all filled up with pocket change. All you want now is to feel something magical. Let’s do a little empowering magic.

WITH THIS SPELL YOU NEED A LIGHTER – NEVER USE MATCHES!!!

First things first, strip completely naked, and that includes socks and underwear. I didn’t include clothes in my $2.00 of required tools, and clothes can be expensive. Being naked will also get you into a magical mindset, and it may even help you get used to experiencing new things and being able to still work magic under those conditions. With this spell in particular, being naked is going to make it that much easier to experience something.

Sit down with the candle, and put your hands on either side of it. Bow your head and close your eyes. Think about the candle for a bit. Think about its shape, how it feels, what it is, and how its about to be used magically, and what it might symbolize ritually. Imagine the thoughts and images in your head flowing out of you and entering into the candle. If you can, specifically imagine the route they take from your head, through your chest, through your arms and hands, and finally into the candle. Continue these visualizations for five to ten minutes.

Once you finish, place the candle on the candle holder. Take the lighter in your hand and say, “I am of the magi, and I call forth fire elemental to sit upon this flame.” As soon as you finish, flick the lighter, and use the flame to light the candle. If you screw up lighting the candle, start again with, “I am of the magi…”. As you light the candle, imagine a fire elemental (whatever you think that would look like) being pulled up from underground and into the flame.

Once the candle is lit, sit down. Watch the flame for a minute. If a fire elemental is inside, it may be moving erratically. The flame may be much bigger than it should be, or the flame may rapidly change from being small to large and back.

Sit down facing the candle. Spread your legs a bit, but not so much that you’re uncomfortable. Hold your hands up to your head with your palms facing the ceiling.

Look at the candle. Look at the flame on the candle. Think of the energy coming off the candle as it burns. Think about the heat coming off that flame. Imagine that the energy is like the heat, an invisible aura that emanates from the flame. Look at the flame, and visualize that energy coming off the flame. Imagine pulling that energy and that heat off, towards you. Imagine pulling that energy off the flame and into you.

Continue sitting there, legs still spread, hands still up, imagining the energy coming into from the flame like a steady stream. Imagine the fire elemental being pulled off the flame and into your body. Imagine it coming to rest inside of you.

If you managed to successfully evoke and take in the fire elemental, you’ll probably begin to feel a bit hotter underneath your skin, and a lot more powerful. Taking in a fire elemental is like getting a quick boost of power. If you don’t manage to get a fire elemental, you may still end up drawing some of the energy from the candle into yourself. If you’re not used to taking in energy, it may seem like an awful lot.

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“Got a beatup glove, a homemade bat, and brand-new pair of shoes, you know I think it’s time to give this game a ride.”

So there’s four spells. All you have to do is follow the instructions and do  one tonight and tomorrow you’ll be a magician, and you’ll be on your way to spiritual attainment.

If you have any issues or questions with the different spells, or have trouble getting them to work, I’m more than happy to help. The only thing is, I’m not going to help anyone who hasn’t attempted one of the spells. The whole point is to do something tonight, not put off doing it until I can get around to answering your questions.

Even if you’re having problems, try doing the spell. If you don’t understand why you’re doing something, that’s okay. If you’re not sure about something, guess. If there’s a part of the spell where you don’t know what to do, make something up. If you can’t do a spell exactly as its written for some reason, then make some sort of modification to it so that you can do it. It doesn’t need to be exact. It doesn’t even need to work the first time you try it. What does need to happen is you need to be doing magic today, even if you completely fail at it.

Likewise if you want to tell me that this is crap, it’s dangerous, tell me why it won’t work, tell me how they can be improved, or otherwise complain or point out flaws in these spells, go ahead. But if you’re going to do any of that, do one of the spells first. If you’re not a magician, I don’t care about you’re opinion on magic. It’s uninformed, and I know a hell of a lot more than you do.

If you want to compliment me on this post or tell me how great it is, I always like to hear nice things, but wait until after you’ve done one of the spells. Then you can talk about what you did and experienced if you want. And, until you’ve done one of these spells, doing one of these spells is going to help you a lot more than commenting on Internet blogs.

If you want to talk about your experiences with these spells, or how well they worked for you, feel free. I always like hearing about how this sort of stuff works or doesn’t work for other people.

Trials of the Magi

Once upon a time the Freemasons had this initiatory ritual. Basically the initiate would be blindfolded and led into a room. One of the senior Masons would then put a handgun up to his head, and ask him if he was afraid of death. The initiate was expected to say no, and after that the senior Mason would pull the trigger.

Of course the gun wasn’t loaded, so the initiate would survive the ordeal. If the initiate knows the gun isn’t loaded, it seems like a stupid little game, and that’s all it really is. If the initiate thinks the gun is loaded though, then it starts to seem more like a cruel hazing ritual, but it’s actually a true initiation ritual, and an example of the sorts of trials a magus must go through.

Usually early in our careers as magicians we are all given these trials to overcome. Either, as with the Freemasons, they are done by senior group members or teachers in order to prepare us for what lies ahead, or we receive them in a more spiritual way. These trials are important, and hopefully all magicians receive them. These trials remove our fears, so we can operate magically, and make us strong enough so that the spiritual world doesn’t break us.

With the Freemason ritual, in particular, the point is to desensitize someone and remove their fear of death. Magical workings can become very scary things. There’s a lot out there that can kill you. Many magicians deal with these scary things by becoming so afraid they use numerous unnecessary protections in their operations and never really push themselves in their magical practice. These magicians never seem to get anywhere with their practice, and miss out on a good deal of what magick has to offer.

Once a person learns about the spiritual world, that fear can make this world a very frightening one to live in. They now know that there are powerful and horrible spirits out there that can at any time enter their home and kill them without repercussions, and there’s not much out there to defend them from this. They then spend their lives in anxiety and fear trying to protect themselves, or they become born again Christians.

The metaphysical universe, as practicing magicians see it, is not a very comforting and protective place. It’s a place where different spirits are attacking each other, and different magicians are attacking each other, and good or evil doesn’t determine the victory, but rather whoever’s strongest. The universe is not weighted towards good. There is no all mighty God looking out for his children, and saying a name, such as Jesus Christ, holds no special power over the spirits. The metaphysical universe is a mortally dangerous place, and we’re cast out there, pretty much alone, to survive on whatever inner-strength and wits we might possess.

Christianity meanwhile offers a safe-haven from all of this. There is an all mighty god, who is good and righteous, and he loves you and wants to protect you. Whenever things get to the point that a person can’t handle them, they can always turn to God for protection and aid. That’s why so many magicians turn to Christianity after their first bad experience. The church offers them safety.

The Freemason ritual is meant to force the initiate to face death, to overcome their fear of it, and show them that even all alone they can survive it. The next time the initiate is put into mortal danger, it’s not going to be as bad. All of that fear and anxiety is going to be washed away, and they’ll be able to practice their magic without worrying about what might happen to them.

That’s great if you have a fear of death, but not all of us fear death. For some of us, there are things far worse than death, and so our individual trials need to deal with those issues too.

When I was first starting out, I underwent a spiritual trial I can still remember because it was so emotionally scarring. I was playing around with some new found power, putting certain energies out and astrally projecting and seeing what I could find. That night I think I was seeing if I could attract a potential date to me and meet them on the astral. What I got instead was horrific.

Eventually I gave up with what I was trying to do and just fell asleep, and I ended up in a super-vivid dream. Those aren’t too uncommon for me. Those are the dreams where I can accurately smell, and taste, and feel every small thing around me. This one though felt even more real than my normal super-vivid dreams.

In my dream I was me, but I had a compulsion I couldn’t quite control, and I was forced to act upon it. The compulsion was a kind of necrophilia. I had two dead bodies hidden away in two different buildings, and I couldn’t help but move back and forth from one to the other and then having sex with them.

Some of you might be thinking of pale white recently dead bodies, and that probably doesn’t seem so bad, but that’s not what I’m talking about. These bodies were completely unpreserved, and probably months or more old. They were decaying, they smelled and tasted putrid, and insects were running through them.

Through out the dream I was terrified that I would get caught doing what I was doing, and I was really ashamed of it, but still I had to do it. The actual sexual experience was beyond horrific. It’s still the most disgusting thing I could possibly imagine, and before this dream I couldn’t even imagine something like this. Worse for me was that through out the dream I wanted to be having this sort of sex. I can’t remember how many times I had sex during that dream, but it was a lot.

I woke up from that dream a complete mess. I felt so sick right afterwards. Luckily I was still with my teacher then, so I at least had some help in recovering from what happened. A lot of people told me to write this off as just being a dream. I knew back then that it wasn’t just a dream, but I was already telling myself it was. That thought in my head that maybe it was just a dream was the only thing that stopped me from curling up in a fetal position and mumbling insanely for the rest of my life.

I was emotionally scarred by the whole experience. To be honest, it very nearly broke me. But I recovered from it, and now I’m stronger for it. In fact I was so scarred from that experience that I’m desensitized to anything else the universe might throw at me.

Some gross and yucky spirit wants to rape me? It’s not going to be that bad, sex with dead bodies was worse. I’m not afraid of going to prison and being gang raped there either, as many men are, because that’s still not as bad as sex with dead bodies (or even yucky spirits). It’s not just sex things though, it’s any kind of gross, disgusting thing. I’m more than happy to walk through raw sewage or an adult theater filled with human secretions, and the spiritual world equivalents of these places, because it’s still not as bad as sex with dead bodies.

There is nothing that can be done to me or shown to me that can ever scar me or break me, because it will never be as bad as that dream was. Even that dream has lost a lot of its edge, because I survived it, and I know I can survive it.

That was one of my trials. It was a very horrible one, but I’m glad it happened. I’ve become extraordinarily resilient because of it. The horrible things out there don’t scare me, and I can go right on with my life even after having a horrible or gross experience.

I’m relating my personal experience, and the Freemason ritual, to give some examples of what these trials look like, so they can be properly identified. They are usually very horrible and scarring things, and one of the not so fun parts of magic. They’re a necessity though, and ultimately a good thing, and something we, as magicians, should embrace. It’s a thing that makes us stronger, and makes us strong enough to reach our full potential in performing magical operations.

As an aside, the next time you’re in Walt Disney Land, take a ride on Mr Toad’s Wild Ride, and all the while think about the Freemason ritual (Disney himself was a Mason, and there’s a theory that the original park rides were meant to introduce children to Masonic ideas).

Mood And Magic

I had a really bad year once. I don’t mean bad like I went goth or started listening to nothing but Supertramp, but I had about a year where I wasn’t feeling very happy. It was just a jumble of events that kept occurring which were sad, or depressing, or stressful. It was a lot of things, and its not like I just broke down and had a nervous breakdown one day. But slowly, and very gradually, my mood shifted to being not so pleasant.

During this time my spirituality started to change. I started seeing spirits less and less, and eventually not at all. I stopped hearing them when they talked too. My ability to sense energy started to diminish. I could still notice the energy movements directly around me, but it took effort, and I couldn’t feel all that much.

I could still gather up information, but I had to forcibly channel, and meditate, and concentrate. I could still speak with specific spirits, but I had to try really hard, and what I heard came in really weak.

Magically, I could still do magic, I could still fall back on my favorite rituals, but it was much more difficult, and I was succeeding less and less. Psionic magic started to become very difficult. I used to sometimes accidently make things happen by just wanting them, and that spontaneous ability seemed to leave me.

Everything seemed to be effected, including things like divination, astral projection, and glamours.

I wasn’t completely defenseless, and I wasn’t completely stripped of my magical ability. I could still cast a spell or jump into a witch war if I had to, but that sort of stuff took a lot of effort, and I was far weaker than I remembered being.

It happened so gradually, I didn’t even notice it happening at first, and by the time I did start to notice, I had started to forget the way I used to be.

And when that happened, it sparked some doubt in me. Maybe my spiritual beliefs were all fantasies or delusions. Maybe I am, or was, a seriously disturbed individual. All of these things I had memories of seeing and feeling, I wasn’t feeling anymore, and I was starting to wonder if I ever really did.

Then I had a really good day. It was actually a good week that culminated into a really good day. I remember visiting the park that night, and I felt everything. It was a large park, and I could feel every blade of grass and animal and insect in the place. And every person, including the girl I went with. And I knew everything each of them was feeling, and what they all felt like on the inside, spiritually speaking. In the same way, I could feel of the spirits there too. I could see them walking around, and I could talk to them if I wanted too. The entire park was a sensual overload.

And my mind, my mind just opened up all of a sudden. I still knew things, but I didn’t know how. There was a fogginess in my head, and stuff would just sort of come out of that. But now that fog was lifted, and it was like I suddenly had multiple minds that were hidden behind that fog, and now I could see how they were working and how everything was figured out logically. I felt like I had become some sort of genius.

And that’s when I remembered that this is what it should feel like to be me. I should be living in that sensory overload, able to feel the entire universe around me. And my mind should be working at that higher level. I shouldn’t just know things, but I should be able to see how I’m figuring them out. I should feel my higher connections. Energy should be pouring out of me. I should be seeing, and interacting, with dozens of spirits every day. And my life should be so spiritual that it seems normal to me, and I never have any reason to doubt its reality.

I realized that something had been seriously wrong with me, and at the same time any spiritual doubt I may have had was wiped away.

I’m not telling this story to brag, or to try to gain sympathy for my plight, but to share the lesson of it all:

The better your mood, the more spiritually adept you are.

We have higher bodies. After our physical and astral bodies, both of which we’re already very connected to, we have our mental body, or Holy Guardian Angel. Our connection to this body still exists at birth, but it’s somewhat severed. We can rejoin with this body, as I have, but even if we don’t our mood will still effect our magic. Our mental body is powerful. It’s full of knowledge and ability. Magically and spiritually speaking, it’s the greatest source of power we have available to us. It’s also a piece of who we are, and without it we’re all incomplete.

Our mental body exists in a place called the heavenly planes, called that because it’s a seriously happy place. There are of course lots of different places in there, but all of them represent various versions of what some would term heaven. The lowest area of the mental planes is probably close to the theological Christian interpretation of heaven, being a place of perfect love and contentment.

Like attracts like, and we’re drawn towards what is like us, and away from what is unlike us. When my mood started to diminish, I became unlike the heavenly planes, and unlike my mental body. Even though I fully reconnected myself to my mental body, once my mood shifted that connection became strained, and as my mood got worse so too did that connection. As things got worse, it was getting more and more difficult for me to connect to this part of myself.

Even if I hadn’t merged with my mental body and reconnected with it, my mood still would’ve had a negative affect on my magical ability. Just because someone hasn’t yet gone through that process of reconnection doesn’t mean that they don’t have some sort of connection to their higher self and that they aren’t gaining something from it.

When I had my good day, I became more aligned with the mental planes, and I became more aligned with my mental body, and almost instantly my connection came back. I became whole again.

When our mood is positive, we have a stronger connection to the higher planes, and to our higher bodies, and our spirituality and magical abilities are all strengthened. When our mood is negative, our connections to these higher bodies fade, and we become spiritually weaker.

Of course it isn’t realistic to always be happy or always be in a good mood. However if one wishes to be spiritual, and to be as strong as they can spiritually, then they need to stay away from long periods of negativity.

We also need to adjust our mood for magical practice. Magic isn’t something that is best practiced in a serious or somber mood, and its definitely not something that should be practiced while enraged, upset, or depressed. Moods such as happiness, joy, and love produce much better results.

When we aren’t in a positive mood, and we need to perform a magical operation, we need to get into one of those moods. Each of us has our own different happy thoughts, and we need to use those to empower ourselves.

I listen to punk music, and surround myself with toys and old video games, and think about tv shows and movies and comic books. These are some of my happy things. All the little pictures I put on the posts that are meant to be humorous, or reference some part of my childhood, all the little jokes I make, and all of the references I make to pop-culture aren’t just part of my personality, and they definitely aren’t a sign of immaturity. These are all a crucial part of my spiritual practice. I need these things. They make me stronger.

I’ve said before that I’ve never met a magician that could actually do real magic, to any degree, who didn’t also have a good sense of humor. I’ve also never been in a successful group ritual that was entirely serious and where there was never a point where people broke out laughing.

There’s a reason for that. These things aren’t distractions. They aren’t profane. They’re empowerment. At the same time rage and depression make horrible fuels for a magical operation. Nothing ever seems to work when a magician tries to harness the power of those emotions (yes there are darker magics that can use these things, but I’m not talking about those just now, and if you’re trying to harness the power of your rage and depression but still doing magic like you normally would, you’re not doing it right).

Somber rituals meanwhile, where everyone goes through the motions and where everyone is afraid they’ll ruin everything by adding some levity to the operation, are even worse. There’s no way to even harness that crap.

By the way, if you’re wondering why I put Batman at the top of this post, it’s because I talk about my Dark Knight of the soul.

Energy and Magick – A Basic Treatise

The first myth about energy that must be dispelled is that it doesn’t exist. A lot of people in the community have been saying this lately, and a few months back the blogosphere was stirred up with arguments over whether or not energy was actually a thing. Energy is a real thing, and any person who claims otherwise is not a magician. They may be an armchair magician coming up with unfounded theories on magic, and they may have done a few rituals by going through the motions, but they have never actually done magic.

The vast majority of everything that is termed magic is tied into energy work. A basic understanding of energy is necessary to do any significant amount magic, especially in regards to developing magical techniques. Energy is also an essential component to logically explaining how and why magic works. To dismiss energy as a fiction is to admit to having no understanding of magic.

It also needs to be pointed out that energy isn’t a new concept. It’s been called different things through out history, but the idea of energy has existed in various spiritual systems going almost as far back as recorded history. Energy is not an invention of New Agers or the New Thought camp or any other group that Pagans and Ceremonialists sometimes like to mock. It also isn’t limited to just the older Eastern religions. The idea appears in the West too.

Another thing to keep in mind, just because a particular magician didn’t mention something in their written works doesn’t mean they weren’t aware of its existence. This is especially true of metaphysical truths that should be obvious to actual practitioners. Energy definitely falls into this category, as does other things like the metaphysical qualities of stones.

Ceremonial magic has produced a lot of literal magicians. These are the types who think that a magician’s written works compromise the totality of his or her knowledge, and consider anything not discussed in the work to be at the very least beyond the scope of that magician’s work, and in many cases believe it to be nothing more than New Age hokum. Many Ceremonialists, Pagans, and other Western magicians dismiss anything not discussed by major predecessors as unfounded and untrue, even when it is something so basic and simple it should be obvious to any practitioner.

The second thing that needs to be discussed is why we call it energy, and most specifically if it should be called something else. It’s been called other things in the past, such as aether, void, and spirit. Energy, when used metaphysically, also doesn’t mean the same thing that it means when used scientifically. Some have said that we should really call it something else, since it isn’t really energy.

The problem is, language really isn’t made to communicate metaphysical experiences. Many of these experiences, like most things in life, can only be understood through comparison of our own life experiences. At this point in time, only a small percentage of the world’s population has experienced a true metaphysical event, and an even smaller percentage have sought to study and analyze these experiences. There are simply not enough adepts in the world to warrant new words being added into the languages of the world to describe these experiences.

One option is that we make up completely new words. The problem with doing this is, unless someone has a code book, they won’t know which words are meant to be applied to which metaphysical experiences. If I say ‘bonta’, for instance, do I mean energy, or shielding, or grounding, or something else entirely? Unless you’re familiar with the term, you won’t know.

What we do in magic, what we’ve always done (and what I’ve noticed the gods also do sometimes when they need to communicate foreign ideas), is we steal similar words. We find something that’s kind of like the metaphysical experience or magical operation we’re trying to describe, and then we call it that. This isn’t a perfect system, but in this instance, at least, if we find another magician who has experienced the same thing, they can usually infer what we’re talking about by looking at the original definition of the word.

For instance, the word shield is a piece of armor, usually carried in ones hand, and used to protect oneself. It is a universal symbol of protection. In magical terms, a shield is a barrier of energy used to protect oneself from unwanted magical attacks, among other things. In scientific terms, grounding refers to how electricity moves on a path towards the ground whenever possible. In magical terms it refers to pushing energy out of oneself and into the ground.

Energy is another one of these words. Energy is an invisible force which does things, and on the physical level is usually the force that empowers the magical operation. It does other things too, like giving us the ability to continue living and sustain our physical bodies. For the most part, energy is a fairly obvious term to describe this force. It does other things too, which maybe aren’t so obvious with the term energy, like constructing the universe in a way that empathy is possible, but no term is going to be perfect.

Of course we could call it something else, like communication as one person suggested. Except there really isn’t a point to changing the name. Yes, communication would better describe its functions within empathy and telepathy, but it doesn’t really describe how it empowers a spell. And just like energy, the term communication already describes something completely different.

As of right now, everyone is used to using the term energy and understands what it means. Any other term is going to be just as flawed, so there’s really no point to changing the name now.

Before we can begin to understand something, we need to define it, so what is the definition of energy? The best definition I can come up with is that it is an invisible, yet sensible and relatively quantifiable, force which can cause change and which can be manipulated and directed.

So let’s start by describing what a force is. A force is something that can cause some sort of change in the universe at some level. Heat is a force. When created, it will raise the temperature of the surrounding area. You can feel that temperature change. Electricity is a force. Electricity can do everything from turning on your TV to killing you. Even though you can hit me with it, your fist isn’t a force. But the momentum of the punch and the calories your body expends to move your fist, those are forces.

Metaphysical energy is also a force. On a very basic level it can be felt, and it can change your emotional state. Manipulated at a more finer level it can do everything from making you rich to killing your enemies to empowering your sperm, and at some levels it can even create life from nothingness (imaginary/artificial elementals). Energy is a force.

Energy, like many things in the universe, is invisible. We normally can’t see it with our eyes, although there are ways to train our mind into creating visual representations of energy. However energy doesn’t reflect light, so these visions of energy are not being seen by our eyes, and can not be objectively viewed by just anyone.

Energy is, however, sensible. We can feel energy around us. How much energy we need in order to feel it, and how accurately we interpret those feelings, is entirely dependent on how well we’ve trained our bodies.

Energy is also relatively quantifiable. As long as I’m adept enough at sensing energy, I can look at the energy is column A and the energy in column B and determine which column contains more energy. I can determine that one room contains a lot of energy, and that another room contains a little bit of energy.

However I can not objectively measure the energy in an area. My measurements of energy are based on the reactions of my physical and spiritual bodies, neither of which are completely accurate tools for measurement. There are a large number of internal variables which can make me incapable of accurately measuring energy in the same way that a fever can render me incapable of accurately measuring the temperature in the room with just my body.

These measurements are all relative too. I can say that column A has a lot of energy, or that it has more energy than column B. However I can’t give you a number, like 95 degrees, so that you could understand how much energy is in column A. What I might consider to be a lot of energy, you might not consider to be much energy at all. Meanwhile without personal knowledge of column B, you have no idea what more energy than column B means.

How I sense energy is also relative to where I am in my own spiritual path. What I thought was a lot of energy ten years ago doesn’t seem like much energy at all to me now. What’s more, if I cannot recheck something now, I have no idea what my past measurement means, since my concept of energy quantities has changed so dramatically. For instance my first teacher seemed to be extraordinarily powerful. More energy fell off her than I ever saw anywhere else. However its been many years since we’ve had any kind of contact. If we were to meet up today, it’s completely plausible that I may have surpassed her many times over, and now view her as having very little power. It’s also completely plausible that she’ll seem just as powerful to me and beyond my capabilities today as she did then.

Energy can also cause change, which, as we discussed earlier, is necessary for any force. Energy is typically the empowering force in a magical operation. It’s what makes things happen and causes the desired change. It’s also what connects things together.

Lastly energy can be manipulated and directed. We can move energy. We can take energy from point A and bring it to point B. We can also change that energy. We can change it to another type of energy, or mold it into something else completely. We can make that energy do what we want it to do.

These are all important things. Energy isn’t some natural primal force, like a hurricane, which we can neither stop or control. Energy is something we have control over. We can move it, we can create it, and we can work with it. This is essential for magic to, well, work.

That being said, energy is a physical thing. Energy is deeply tied to matter, and it seems to bare some relationship to it. Matter only exists within the physical realms, and the same is true of energy.

We live in the physical planes. Earth is part of the physical realms. The physical realms have physical stuff. Earth isn’t the entirety of the physical realms though. There are other worlds. There are also completely spiritual places within the physical realms which contain little or no matter. Where ghosts and spirits exist, the ones you see in this world anyways, is part of the physical realm. When you astrally project, where you go is almost always part of the physical realms.

Beyond the physical realms we have the mental realms. There everything is based in thoughts and ideas and knowledge. There is no matter there, and there is no energy. Beyond that are the emotional realms, which lie on the other side of the abyss, and once again contain no energy.

So magical operations done in the mental realms, so long as they are not intended to affect or utilize the physical realms, do not use energy. However magic done in a physical realm with the intention of affecting the mental or emotional realms will almost always use energy, since it is usually a necessary conduit (among other things).

There are also different types of energy. There’s happy energy, and sad energy, and playful energy, and angry energy. For every kind of emotion that exists, there is a kind of energy.

Note that I said every emotion. There are many more emotions than exist in the normal human spectrum. In fact there are more emotions than exist in any human’s spectrum. There are just too many emotions for anyone to be able to naturally feel all of them.

Some more common emotions that fall outside the normal emotional spectrum are death, life, and violence (not to be confused with anger or rage). All of these things have specific energies that can be felt, and in turn can give you a concept of what the emotion feels like, but which are not naturally felt by most humans.

So the question arises, where does energy come from? Within the physical realms, energy is a byproduct of emotion. Whenever an emotion occurs, energy is created as a result.

So now we must define emotion as it’s meant in a metaphysical sense. An emotion is not the same thing as a feeling. A feeling is a kind of emotion, but there are also emotions which aren’t feelings. Feelings are also things that are created within us at some level. Either our bodies’ physiologies create them, or they’re created on some spiritual level, depending on what you want to believe, and they can be easily manipulated through the use of certain drugs.

Emotions, however, don’t begin with us. Emotions existed before there were people, before there were spirits, and they actually appear pretty close to the beginning of the universe.

An emotion is a primal force created as a byproduct of an act. An act meanwhile is something that happened.

The very first thing in the universe, at least as far back as we’re able to see, are acts. The first act occurred when the first part of the universe created itself. This in turn creates the very first emotion, creation, or creativity. As it turns out, the earlier an emotion appears in the creation of the universe, the more powerful it tends to be, and the more energy it tends to create on the physical realm. This is why sex magic can be so powerful.

So an action occurs. That action causes a change. This action-change in turn creates an emotion specifically tied to it, and that emotion ripples across the universe in a wave. In the physical realm, this wave takes the form of energy.

Going back though, these actions, which start the universe, create emotions, which form the emotional realm. You get a few of these emotions together and eventually they realize they exist. This is the first idea, and from this idea other thoughts and ideas start to spring forth, which in turn is knowledge, and all of this creates the mental planes. That initial creative emotion drops down and enters the mental planes, and you start having creativity and art and culture and invention and all sorts of other things. Eventually these things start to take form. Now they’re not just thoughts and ideas, but they start to gain substance. Enter the physical realms.

The physical realms started as nothing. Just this idea of a physical place where things could have substance, and this was caused by creation. Then emotion comes into the mix, and when it enters the physical realm, it creates energy. Energy will be the form that emotion takes when it enters the physical realm, because everything in the physical realm must have a form. Thoughts are now brainwaves, creation is now cells, and emotion is energy. This gooey energy starts to fill up the physical realm, and then Thought enters the mix. Empowered by Creation, Thought starts to come up with ideas which in turn molds this energy into different things. First completely spiritual realms are created. And then spirits are created which inhabit these realms. These spirits, in turn, are connected to higher entities made up entirely of thoughts, ideas, and knowledge. More emotions come in, the energy gets more diverse, more and more things are molded, and eventually from all of this matter is formed. Then we have physical worlds and later they’re inhabited by entirely physical beings. These beings in turn have a connection to a spiritual self, and to a mental self which is entirely thoughts and ideas. This is the creation of the universe, and how energy came into existence.

NOTE: I understand this idea leaves a lot to be desired. The creation of the physical realms from the mental realms leaves a lot to be desired in this explanation, especially considering how smooth, and even inevitable, the creation of the mental realms from the emotional realms are. It was really a question of whether I wanted to spend weeks, maybe months, trying to sort out all of the small details, or whether I wanted to get an article posted right now. Hopefully I’ll be able to clarify this process further in a future article or a future revision of this article. If not, feel free to do the work yourself.

Holy Guardian Angels (HGA) & Mental Bodies: An FAQ

General Questions:

1. What is an HGA?

An HGA, or Holy Guardian Angel, is one of several different spiritual bodies that every person possesses. Your physical body and your astral body would be two other examples of spiritual bodies. Unlike those bodies though, your HGA is not made up of any amount of mass or energy. Your connection to your HGA is also partially severed prior to birth, and this causes your HGA to act independently, and sometimes casts the illusion that your HGA is a separate and distinct type of spirit.

2. Is an HGA an Angel?

No. Angels are a sentient and distinct quasi-physically incarnate type of spirit that possesses freewill. They have individual personalities, thoughts and agendas and have no bodily connection to incarnate human beings. An HGA meanwhile is non-physical and a single part of an incarnate person.

3. Is an HGA a spirit guide?

No. A spirit guide is a distinct and separate non-incarnate spirit which attempts to aid an incarnate person in pursuing their spiritual path. An HGA may aid a person in finding their spiritual path, but it has a vested interest in doing this since the person is really just another aspect of themselves, and the only way for the HGA to achieve enlightenment is for their physical selves to also achieve enlightenment.

4. Is an HGA a servitor?

No. The term servitor is used to describe distinct spirits, either sentient or otherwise, which in some way aid or serve a practitioner. An HGA sometimes seems like a servitor because it will often times work to aid the practitioner, however it does this because it is part of the practitioner. An HGA is no more a servitor than person’s right arm is.

5. What’s the difference between an HGA and a Mental Body?

There is no difference. These are two separate terms which are used to describe the exact same thing. The term HGA has a gnostic origin and was made popular by certain Ceremonial Magic systems, most notably the Golden Dawn and its offshoots, especially the OTO. The term mental body is less confusing and a better description, and is currently gaining more popularity.

6. Is a mental body like an astral body?

Yes and no. It’s like an astral body in that it is a separate body from the physical body, it can access areas the physical body is barred from, and there are ways to shift your consciousness into your mental body to act through it.

In several ways though it’s not like your astral body. Your astral body is made up mostly of energy, although it does contain some small amount of matter. Your mental body contains neither energy nor matter. It’s made up mostly of thoughts, ideas, and information. It also contains things like emotions and passions.

Your mental body is also partially severed from your physical and astral bodies at birth. There is still a connection, but this connection is incomplete. This allows the mental body to act independently and have a personality which differs from your physical self. Often this casts the illusion that the mental body is a separate entity.

Finally your mental body has access to areas that your astral body is barred from.

7. What is the purpose of having an HGA?

Your HGA is one of your spiritual bodies. It acts as a bridge between your astral body (which is in turn connected to your physical body) and your emotional body (which in turn connects to even higher bodies). In this way your HGA acts as the bridge between your lower selves and your higher selves.

Your HGA is also your means of accessing the planes it inhabits. These are generally known as the heavenly planes, because on average they are extraordinarily wonderful places and collectively they encompass all of the things and places that are usually associated with heaven.

8. Do only certain groups utilize the HGA in spiritual practice?

The term HGA is largely associated with certain ritual magical groups. Specifically the term is a part of many systems of Ceremonial Magic, although the concept is also seen in a lot of systems that were founded in Ceremonial Magic or which had a cross-influence with Ceremonial Magic.

However the actual process is not specific to any group or belief system. The idea appears again and again in many different systems and religions. Often times a practitioner will belong to a system or religion that doesn’t have the vocabulary to describe merging with ones HGA, and it’s not something that’s usually talked about by members of the system. This type of practitioner may have a very difficult time describing the process. This can also make it difficult for people of different systems, with vastly different vocabularies and beliefs, to realize that they are actually describing the same process. It’s even more difficult for someone who has never experienced it.

Also you have to keep in mind that just because a specific person, or book, or spiritual system, or religion doesn’t mention something, doesn’t mean that it isn’t known and isn’t being experienced. Many practitioners through out history didn’t bother to write down the entirety of their practice, and they often didn’t mention things that should have been obvious to fellow practitioners. Merging with your HGA is one of those things. It’s generally assumed that any advanced practitioner has already done it.

Make-up of the Mental Body

1. What gender is my HGA?

Your HGA will be the opposite of your physical gender. If you’re a man, you’re HGA is a woman. If you’re a woman, your HGA will be a man. This is because prior to your birth your HGA was hermaphroditic. In order for you to have a gender, your HGA had to give you one of its genders. Which ever gender you didn’t get is the one your HGA retained.

2. If I’m homosexual, will this change my HGA’s gender?

No. There is some confusion because merging with ones HGA is a sexual act. This has caused some to speculate that perhaps a person’s HGA appears to them in a form they would find sexually attractive, which does sometimes happen, and as the gender they would prefer, which doesn’t happen. The HGA’s gender is determined solely by the gender it retained at your birth, not by the gender you would prefer to have sex with. Furthermore the act of merging is a higher sexual act. It’s far removed from some of the more base elements of physical sex while incorporating other higher elements. In a lot of ways the act is no longer comparable to physical sex, and normal gender conventions and heterosexual and homosexual labels really don’t apply anymore.

3. If I’m spiritually a different gender, will this change my HGA’s gender?

No. If were born a man, you are a spiritual expression of your soul’s masculine side. If you were born a woman, you are a spiritual expression of your soul’s feminine side. Your alternate side rests with your HGA, and the only way to incorporate that into your physical self is to merge with your HGA.

4. If I have sex reassignment surgery, will this change my HGA’s gender?

No. Your HGA’s gender is determined at your birth, so modifying your gender after the fact will have no effect on it. Changes made to your physical body with sex reassignment surgery will not change your spiritual gender.

5. What sort of stuff is my mental body made out of?

Thoughts, ideas, knowledge, imagination, information. These are the sorts of stuff that things on the mental planes are made up of. Your mental body is also made up, partially, of stuff that exists in higher planes. Things like emotions and passions.

6. What powers does my mental body possess?

Your mental body contains quite a bit of knowledge and information, much of it spiritual. Exactly what it knows and how much it knows is going to differ from person to person. One of the biggest factors though will be how many times you’ve been reincarnated and what you did during those lifetimes. Your mental body will also have greater access to your past lives. Outside of your own information, your mental body will also have access to the unlimited stores of information located in the mental planes.

Your mental body also has the ability to act independently of your other bodies, to access any area of the mental planes (the middle triad on the tree of life), and the ability to communicate and interact with entities that exist on the mental planes. Your mental body also serves as your bridge between your physical and astral bodies and your other higher bodies, such as your emotional body.

Finally all of this extra knowledge comes with a great deal of power. Your mental body already understands how to do things, magically, that you otherwise wouldn’t know. Merging with ones mental body also usually increases both energy production and general spiritual sensitivity.

Merging with your HGA

1. What effect does merging with your HGA have?

To start, you’ll pretty much instantaneously get a huge boost in power and quite a bit of knowledge popped into your head. It’s a lot of power and information to get all at once, and with most people it will probably take months, maybe even a full year, to sort out everything they now know and are able to do. How long it takes is going to be somewhat dependent on how much magical training the person had prior to merging, and how dedicated they are to exploring their new abilities.

At the same time merging with your mental body will give you full access to the mental planes, the ability to gather knowledge from there, the ability to channel spirits that reside there, and the ability to shift your consciousness to your mental body. This is done in a similar way to astral projection.

2. What does merging with ones HGA feel like?

I personally didn’t find it to not be very pleasant, but experiences vary. To me it felt like there was a cold spiritual fire between us, my physical and mental bodies, and this fire was consuming both of us, or rather melting us together, and I had to surrender to it and allow it to destroy who I was to create this new me.

3. How much more power do you gain from merging with your HGA?

The more experienced of a practitioner you are the less you’ll gain from merging, but in any instance it’s going to be a lot of power. It’s not like being ten times more powerful or a hundred times more powerful. It’s like being a million times more powerful. How much power a person has immediately after merging is so much more than what they had prior to merging that it really isn’t comparable anymore. It’s like comparing the amount of water in a raindrop to the amount of water in the ocean.

A large amount of this power though is due to all of the information you gain from merging.

4. How much more knowledge do you gain from merging with your HGA?

The exact amount depends largely on the amount of information you’ve managed to accumulate through out your existence, especially in regards to spiritual knowledge and life lessons. You’ll find a lot of things will start to come easier to you. When you learn certain new things it won’t be so much like learning them, but more like remembering them. A lot of times you’ll just need something to jog your memory to bring a good portion of it flooding back. It’ll also become easier to have past life regressions, and they’ll happen spontaneously much more frequently.

However the biggest advantage is that you’ll now have access to a lot more information. You can now use your mental body to fetch information from the mental planes and talk to entities that exist there, and the amount of knowledge there is astronomical. Comparatively, imagine doing all of your research using your personal library of books at home. Then one day you’re allowed complete access to the library at an ivy league university. It’s a tool that allows you to figure things out and discover new things for yourself.

5. How does merging with your HGA affect your personality?

It can have a few different effects. Generally nothing from your base personality that already exists will be lost. Some of it may be superseded and become secondary once other elements are added into your personality, and the whole process may result in personal growth which causes you to outgrow some elements of your current personality.

For the most part you will take on aspects of your true self, or at least your truer self. Those parts of your personality which are not part of your physical existence, but are rather derived from your spiritual existence, your soul, and which follow you from lifetime to lifetime will start to take a greater precedence. Also lost parts of your personality, parts which did not make the transition into your physical self, will now merge into your physical self.

In the section on gender we already discussed how your physical self is the expression of your masculine or feminine side. After merging you now have access to the other side of yourself, and those two sides will begin working more in tandem. Instead of being one or the other, you will become the expression of both your masculine and feminine sides.

Past life regressions will also become easier after merging, and so you may start incorporating elements of past life personalities into your own personality.

6. What are the prerequisites for merging with your HGA?

There are a few prerequisites that need to be met in order for merging to become possible. These are:

1. Contact must be established with ones HGA.

2. Ones HGA must be ready to merge (usually at the point of contact the HGA is either ready or preparing for this).

3. A person’s mental state must be in alignment with some part of the mental planes in order to achieve union with their mental body. Generally this means shooting for the lowest of the mental planes, which in the Kabalist system is Tiperath.

In order to be in alignment with Tiperath, you need to achieve a state generally described as perfect harmony, complete peace, and true contentment. You don’t have to be able to hold that state indefinitely, but you need to be able to reach it and sustain it long enough for the merging to take place and complete itself. If you can hold it for an hour or two, you’ll probably be okay.

This is why it’s so important to spend time working out your psychological issues and getting yourself to a place where you’re psychologically good and mentally healthy. Such a state is necessary in order to merge with your HGA.

4. You have to be willing to first open yourself up to the merging, and then to surrender yourself to it. This may take some mental and spiritual training. This may mean taking the time to develop a relationship of comfort and trust with your HGA. This may mean having outside guidance to help you through this.

7. How long does it take a person to become ready to merge with their HGA?

It varies from person to person. It depends largely on how many issues you have to work through and what system you’re using to get to that point.

In a good mentor-student relationship it can realistically be achieved in a matter of months, even weeks. In this relationship the mentor is tailor made for the student, and they develop a system for the student that tackles the specific issues the student is having, while at the same time doing it in a way that is very efficient once the student’s personality is taken into account.

Using a one size fits all system it could take a year, or even several years. These systems are designed to tackle all, or at least most, of the issues that a practitioner may face. The individual practitioner, meanwhile, has to go through all the steps, regardless of whether or not they need them. These steps are also not designed to meet the specific needs and learning style of the practitioner, but are rather designed so that they will work with as many people as possible. Efficiency is sacrificed for universality. These systems also require a much higher level of dedication and a lot more time. For the practitioner that doesn’t have that much time and dedication, it may take them much longer to work through the system. Some may never complete the system. You won’t have a mentor pushing you to work through the system and your issues the entire time either, which also doesn’t help.

One size fits all systems are also often times developed in a way to make it take longer than it should to merge. Some of these systems want to keep practitioners paying dues at the lower levels for as long as possible. These practitioners are either going to require less of the group’s resources for their personal practice, or if there isn’t much offered to higher level practitioners, they’re going to be more likely to stay with the group and believe that they are continuing to get something out of it. These groups try to advance the practitioner at as slow a pace as possible, while still allowing the practitioner to see some level of improvement in their abilities so they’ll stay with the group.

The Basic Laws, Rules, and Rights of Magic

Now available as a PDF File.

I want to go over some of the very basics of magical theory, which I’ve split here into the categories of laws, rules, and rights. Like any other discipline, inside of magic and metaphysics there are certain axioms which serve as the fundamental ideas upon which most subsequent magical theory is based. If you really want a deep understanding of how and why magic works, you first need to have a grasp of all of these fundamental ideas.

The coolest part about these different axioms is if there’s something you don’t understand or a question you can’t answer concerning magical theory, if you apply the problem to these different ideas and see how it fits within them many times an answer will become apparent, or you’ll at least find yourself further down the path to discovering the correct answer.

Another cool thing about these axioms are that, at least with the ones I’m posting here, all of these are nondenominational. No matter what your personal religion or beliefs may be, you can utilize these axioms in order to better understand magic and spirituality. You’ll also see all of these axioms, or at least the ideas they express, appearing again and again in different religions, spiritual systems, and spiritual beliefs.

Basic Laws of Magic

The laws of magic are like the laws of physics or any other scientific discipline. They are the strongest kind of fact that can exist. However, just like the laws of physics, none of these laws are considered to be absolute or completely proven. Like science, there is no infallible source of information in the universe through which the laws of magic can be attained. Instead these laws are based off of observation, experimentation, application, intuition, and logic. All laws however have a few things in common, being that:

1. All laws have been observed as true a multitude of times by various magicians through extensive experimentation and the successful practical application of the laws.

2. The theory behind each of the laws, when taken on their own, all make logical sense, and each law is also consistent with how we understand the universe and how it operates.

3. The theory behind every law is complete and every aspect of the law and how it operates is understood.

4. The laws are all consistent with each other and never contradict each other.

5. There is no contrary evidence to, better explanation, or a reasonable alternate explanation to the law which has not been disproved and holds up under both experimentation and practical application.

 Law of Attraction 

The law of attraction is stated as “like attracts like”, and sometimes with the corollary “and dissimilar things repel,” which, as we’ll discuss, is redundant. For the last century the Law of Attraction has been the singular foundation of most New Thought theory. Much of this New Thought theory is sound, being based in the Law of Attraction, however some of the theory neglects the nuances of like attracting like, and so in practical application it does not work as well as it should. Because of this, and because of a natural tendency people have to attack belief systems different from their own, many ritual magicians have come to attack the entire concept of the Law of Attraction. These attacks against the Law of Attraction often make successful arguments because they also fail to recognize the nuances of the Law of Attraction. At the same time the ritual magicians making these attacks seem to have failed to realize how essential the Law of Attraction is in explaining ritual magic and almost all religious and spiritual belief systems in existence.

To start the law is stated as like attracts like, not the same attracts the same. When two things are alike it simply means that they share some similarities between each other, not that they are exactly the same, or even that the have certain qualities that are the same. This is the most important nuance in regards to the Law or Attraction.

The second nuance that needs to be understood is that things can not easily be categorized into single aspects and expected to operate in accordance with the Law of Attraction despite other qualities. For instance just because everything in your life is something you deem ‘positive’, this doesn’t mean that something you deem ‘negative’ won’t be attracted to you due to the Law of Attraction. In fact these ‘negative’ things may be very similar to the positive things in your life.

It is hypothesized that the greater the similarity between two things the stronger their attraction will be. This is, however, not part of the law. Rather it’s a corollary to the law, which is itself not a law but more of a rule (see the explanation for rules below). The problem is that, in practical application, there isn’t always a correlation between the similarity of two things and the strength of their attraction to each other, even though it makes sense that there would be. The situation is made even worse by the fact that the similarity of two things is rather subjective, so it’s usually difficult to determine just how similar two things are, and how similar they are in comparison to two other things. The important thing to remember is that it is very possible for a thing to be attracted to something else which is not very similar to it, because it is still a little bit similar to it.

The final nuance that needs to be taken into account is dissimilar things repel, which is redundant when it is fully understood and causes some confusion. The idea that dissimilar things repel implies that there is some physical force, similar to the force of attraction, which repulses things. This isn’t the case, and the misunderstanding is founded in the idea that things can be in a neutral state of non-attraction, or that they can be in a state of rest not being pulled towards anything else. This isn’t the case. All things are always in a state of attraction. Everything is constantly being pulled towards other things which are similar. This casts the illusion that dissimilar things repel each other. In reality though dissimilar things will just naturally be moving away from each other, since each will be moving towards that which is similar to them.

Enough about the law itself, and on to what it explains to us. Most importantly the Law of Attraction explains to us why the universe is built the way it is and why it seems to be divided into sections and places. In most spiritual belief systems there are different places with different qualities which are kept separate. The most easiest idea to explain is the most simplest form of Christian theology, the idea that there are three places, heaven, hell, and Earth. Each place has it’s own distinct qualities. Heaven is a paradise where all your dreams come true, hell is a horrible place where you’re tortured, and Earth is something in between these two extremes where we exist when we’re still alive. All three places are assumed to be together, each in a single location and each separated from the other two. What I mean is that all of hell is in one place, all of Earth is in another place, and all of Heaven is in a third place. We don’t have pieces of these three places all intermixed together. You don’t walk out of your door on Earth and end up in a part of hell, cross the street there and end up in a part of heaven, and then get on an elevator that takes you to a part of Earth. Each place exists entirely in one location. The pieces aren’t just carelessly intermixed together.

When we look at other belief systems, the system itself may become more complicated but the general idea persists. When we look at the model given in Kabalism we have a lot more places, but each is still distinct and separate and in a single location. Geburah is one place, and Malkuth is another. These places are separate and distinct, and we don’t have parts of each intermixed together. Even in a very simple system though where you believe there is the physical world, where we exist, and a spirit world where ghosts exist, you still have two separate places.

So why is the universe built like this? What’s stopping us from having bits of heaven and hell inter-spliced through out the world? One theory is intelligent design, but there’s really no proof of that and it explains little. In fact if your answer to anything is intelligent design, stop looking for the answer to anything else you don’t understand, because the answer is always going to be intelligent design, and you’ll come to understand nothing.

The Law of Attraction though explains why we have these separate areas. Things that are alike are pulled towards each other. So a bunch of good and happy things come together, and you get heaven. A bunch of horrible stuff comes together and you get hell. This even explains why good people get to go to heaven and bad people end up in hell.

This also explains why the universe is ordered the way it is. Remember being alike does not mean being the same. So suppose you have a heaven and a hell and they make up your two extremes. Now suppose there are thousands of other worlds, none of which are the same as heaven or hell. Suppose you have one that’s a pretty bad place, very similar to hell, but a little bit better than hell. Well that’s similar to hell, so that world and hell are attracted to each other. Now you have another world that’s even a bit better than that. It isn’t really like hell though, it’s too good, so it won’t be attracted to hell, but that world that was already attracted to hell, it’s enough like that world for the two of them to be attracted together. So this second and third world move towards each other, and at the same time hell is moving towards this second world, and now you have these three worlds chained in succession. This process will keep occurring with various worlds and eventually you’ll have a bridge that leads all the way from hell to heaven. The worlds are now ordered based on how alike they are to either of the two extremes, heaven and hell. Of course the actual process is a bit more complicated, there are a lot more worlds, a lot more qualities that need to be taken into account, and heaven and hell are hardly the extremes on the spectrum. But the basic idea still applies and works exactly the same.

In the same way different things that are like these different worlds will be drawn towards them. For example people who are like heaven, people who are good people that are full of positive emotions, are going to naturally gravitate towards heaven, and so heaven will be made up of all of those things that make it heaven. When the qualities of everything in a given world are taken into account, the mean average of those qualities will always be consistent with the mean average of that world, however different things within that world are going to be at various points on the spectrum, because alike is different from being the same. So in heaven there are going to be people who really aren’t good enough or positive enough to be in heaven. Meanwhile there will be people there who are super saints and belong in heaven’s version of heaven. However the vast majority will be close to the average of the spectrum for that world.

As a more relevant example, take Earth, the place where we live. There are some really good people in this world. I mean people who are completely selfless and devote their entire lives to others and at the same time are incredibly happy in life. These are people who don’t really belong here, or at least they don’t really fit in here. They’re more aligned with a higher plane of existence. Meanwhile there are a few people on this planet that are the exact opposite. Go look at any of the famous serial killers. These are people who murder without even having a motive or something to gain from it. The only reason they have for what they do is some perverse sort of joy they desire. And at the same time they feel no sympathy for the many lives they destroy, both of their victims and of their victims’ families, and they feel no guilt for their actions. Most of us can not even begin to comprehend their psychological make-up and how they think. These sorts of people are more aligned with a much lower plane. However the vast majority of people on this planet are somewhere closer to the middle. They have their good acts and selfless moments, but at the same time they are sometimes selfish and even hurtful, although they refrain from committing truly horrific acts. And that’s how all worlds are built. There are some people on the ends of the spectrum, but most people are somewhere in the middle.

So what’s to stop a world like ours, which has this somewhat good/somewhat selfish balance going for it from being invaded by serial killers or saints? Is there some sort of cosmic doorman guarding every planet that only allows so many people that far from the average in? Like I said before this sort of thing isn’t explained by intelligent design, but rather by understanding the physics through which the universe operates. The law of attraction does come into play and tells us that for the most part the people attracted to this world will be the people who are close to the average, especially since the people better aligned to other worlds will, for the most part, be attracted to those worlds. That means we’re mostly safe, but it isn’t foolproof. This world very much could be invaded by serial killers or saints, and this is especially true if we, and by that I mean the collective world community, allow these serial killers and saints to have their way, or worse yet try to bring about a world where we’re all serial killers or saints.

The thing is, this world, and by world I don’t mean planet, isn’t a distinct object. It’s composed of the parts within it. If everyone in this world became a serial killer tomorrow, the nature of this planet would change. The mean average would no longer be where it was. It would shift. When that happens this world is no longer like the worlds it was initially attracted to when that bridge between heaven and hell formed earlier. It’s now like world’s that are further down in that succession. So the world is now attracted to different worlds, and it moves further down the scale, and it becomes a lower realm.

On the more practical side though, the law of attraction explains how some aspects of magic works. It tells us things like our nature, our attitude, the energy we put off, the emotions we have, the thoughts we have, the things we do, and the things we surround ourselves with all have an impact on both what is drawn into our lives and how our spells work.

As one example, when a person enters into a seance and they’re afraid, there’s a good chance they will draw a negative spirit into that seance. Their fear, and the energy that is produced by it, is going to attract negative spirits, and this will increase the odds of one being drawn into the seance.

As another example, suppose you want to cast a love spell to bring a romantic relationship into your life. However as you’re casting that spell, your thoughts are full of sexual fantasies of dominance and force. Or maybe not even that, but something recently has put those sorts of ideas into your mind, like having seen a movie that is themed around that sort of stuff. If the spell is successful, what kind of relationship do you think it will bring into your life? Because of your thoughts, there’s a good chance your spell will bring forth a romantic relationship that is centered around dominance and force. This is why it’s important to focus your mind and keep your attention towards what is relevant during spell work so that you don’t inadvertently affect the spell.

Suppose we’re doing a love spell though and we burn some incense, like rose, which is connected to romantic love and lust and desire, and maybe we put a lavender oil on our candle, which is connected to beauty and either making ourselves look better or attracting a hottie with our love spell. Notice that the associations of rose and lavender are, at least in part, related to the qualities of these plants. A rose is a very pretty, and desirable, plant. Meanwhile lavender smells really nice and so it is associated as beautiful because of the pleasant aroma. So how does rose and lavender work within our love spell because of these qualities? The answer lies within the fact that like attracts like.

As a finality I’d like to talk a bit about one more practical use, the power of positive thinking, which is largely a New Thought idea. The power of positive thinking supposes that having positive thoughts and a positive attitude will draw positive people, things, opportunities, and situations towards you. We’ve discussed the basic idea of the Law of Attraction, and based entirely on that the theory behind the power of positive thinking is solid and it should work. However we also talked about some of the nuances of the Law of Attraction, and those nuances will affect how things are attracted to each other, and because of those nuances the power of positive thinking won’t work 100% of the time. In other words positive thinking won’t guarantee you a positive outcome nor will it absolutely stop bad things from happening to you. Still, taking the Law of Attraction into account, positive thinking will only have a positive affect on the outcome and will only help improve your life. This is why a system of positive thinking, if created and followed correctly, results in some level of success.

Hermetic Law

The Hermetic Law is typically simplified to ‘as above, so below’, and is sometimes stated as “as on Earth so in heaven”. The law is fully stated as ‘that which is above is like that which is below, and that which is below is like that which is above’, which better explains it. The Hermetic Law is named as such because it comes from the Emerald Tablet which is attributed to Hermes Trismegistos. Hermes Trismegistos is a legendary magician from Hellenistic era Egypt who is sometimes considered to be a god and who is also sometimes associated with both the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth.

Breaking down the Hermetic Law, the first part is we take two areas to compare. The law simply states that the two areas be above and below, and so any two areas can be taken. Using our earlier example of simple Christian theology, we can take heaven and Earth, or Earth and hell, or heaven and hell. Or in a Kabalistic idea we can take Kether and Geburah, or Chesed and Malkuth. We can take the physical world and the spiritual world, or the waking world and the dream realm. We can even take two places in the same world, like the top of Mount Everest and the bottom of mount Everest.

What the law says is that whatever two points we take, the physical and magical laws of those two places are always going to be the same. In other words the physics through which the universe operates is going to be consistent through out the entire universe (or multiverse depending on what you believe). That means whatever other places may exist, the physical laws of those places are still going to be consistent with what we know. In other words if you explored the entire universe you’d never find a place where like doesn’t attract like, or where dissimilar things are attracted to each other.

You might be thinking that this law doesn’t make sense, or at least it doesn’t always make sense. I specifically named the dream realm up above, and all of us have some experience dreaming, and we’re all very much aware that the laws of physics don’t always work in the dream realm like they do in the waking world. After all in the dream realm I can usually jump out my window and fly through the air just by believing it’s possible. In the real world though gravity pulls me towards the ground and once again a poorly thought out magical experiment has left me physically injured. The laws of physics are definitely different. Gravity, for instance, doesn’t always work like Newton says it should in the dream realm.

I guess someone could make an argument that the Law of Gravity is incorrect or that we don’t fully understand how it works. That’s a pretty stupid argument though. The Law of Gravity is a pretty solid law in physics. Without some sort of provable evidence the Law of Gravity can’t be  disproved simply because it is inconsistent with the Hermetic Law, such an inconsistency only proves the fallibility of the later law.

The answer is that the Law of Gravity, like every other physical law, still applies in the dream realm.

Take as an example the boiling point of water. I think all of us can agree that water boils at 212 F or 100 C, or at least purified water does. There are particles in tap water so it usually boils at a bit higher of a temperature. But purified water won’t always boil at 212 F. In fact if you go up to Mount Everest that same water would boil at a lower temperature. Does this mean that the laws of physics on the top of Mount Everest are different than at the bottom? If I jump off the top of Mount Everest can I maybe fly then like in my dreams?

No and probably no. Whether you’re on the bottom of Mount Everest or the top, the laws of physics have remained the same. What has changed is your environment. The closer you are to the center of the Earth, the stronger the pull of Earth’s gravity. Because of this the gases in the atmosphere tend to be packed tighter at lower elevations than at higher elevations. This in turn creates a higher atmospheric pressure at lower elevations, and as pressure on a liquid, such as water, increases so too does its boiling point. The lower boiling temperature of water at the top of Mount Everest is consistent with the physical laws of the universe. The only difference is that the physical environment on the top of Mount Everest is different from the physical environment on the bottom. The same is true of the dream realm and the waking world. All of the physical laws are still the same. The environments in the two areas however are different.

So what does the Hermetic Law mean when we’re doing magic? It tells us that wherever we go, be it in this world or any other, magic will always operate the same. So the magic you use on Earth, once environmental factors are taken into consideration, should work just as well while you’re dreaming or during astral projection. This law also tells us that if a magician wants to interact with a spirit in some distant part of the universe, the magician can use the same kinds of magic they would use to interact with the spirit if that spirit were in the same world as the magician.

Say for example you want to do an evocation. You’ve got a grimoire and you’ve found the name of some spirit you want to call forward. Most grimoires don’t explicitly tell you where a spirit normally resides. The spirit you’re looking for can be located anywhere in the universe. Even if the grimoire does tell you where that spirit exists, you can’t be sure it hasn’t moved somewhere else since the book was written.

If the Hermetic Law were not true, we’d have to first determine exactly where a spirit existed, and then we’d have to develop an evocation ritual to specifically target spirits that exist in that place. In order to work, our evocation ritual would have to take into account the various unique physical laws of the spirit’s point of origin. Luckily for us though the Hermetic Law is true, and so the physical laws of the spirit’s point of origin are going to be the same as the physical laws in our own realm. There for if we have an evocation ritual that can be used to draw forth spirits from outside of our own world, that same ritual can be used on any spirit regardless of where they happen to reside. This same application of the law applies when we’re talking about channeling or casting spells on spirits or any other kind of interaction.

The Hermetic Law also tells us that spirits are capable of performing magical feats in our world. Basically anything that a spirit is capable of doing in its own realm it is capable of doing in our world once it is brought here. Suppose you have a spirit that can magically grant great riches. If the Hermetic Law was not true, and you evoked this spirit so that it could make you rich, if the spirit did not have specific first hand knowledge of this world it may not be able to make you rich. The methods the spirit uses to make others rich, methods that work perfectly well in its own world, may not work in our world because the laws of physics would be different. Fortunately though the laws are the same, and so if the spirit knows a way to magically make those in its own world rich, it can use that same process in order to make you rich.

Finally the Hermetic Law tells us that magical information will be consistent throughout the universe. If this weren’t true then channeling, talking to spirits, or exploring how magic works on other realms of existence would be mostly useless. Any information gained about magic or spirituality from sources outside of our own world wouldn’t apply to our world because they would be based on different physical laws. Luckily though the laws are the same everywhere, so the information, if it’s true, will be true everywhere.

On a final note, I’d like to briefly discuss the theory of the macrocosm and the microcosm, which is a rather prevalent theory in some traditions of Ceremonial Magic and which is based on the Hermetic Law. The theory of the macrocosm and the microcosm supposes that the Hermetic Law is not just applicable in regards to location, but can also be applied to differences in scale. There for the macrocosm, which is the entirety of the universe, is the same as a much smaller system, which is a microcosm. Generally, in application, the microcosm is the practitioner. So whatever is true for the entirety of the universe is also true in regards to the practitioner.

Although the theory is sometimes true and certain things which are true of the entire universe are also true of a practitioner of magic, at other times the theory fails. For instance we have now proven the existence of black holes in the universe. However none of us have black holes existing within our bodies. In another instance the universe is always physically expanding, but those of us on diets are physically contracting.

The theory is however sometimes true, which is why it is so widely believed. The similarities that do exist between the macrocosm and the microcosm, what constitutes the truth of the theory, are due to the way in which the universe was created. Unfortunately the relevant theories surrounding the creation of the universe are a bit too complicated to explain in depth within the scope of this article, however they do show that the similarities between systems of different scales are not due to the effects of the Hermetic Law, but are rather explained by other metaphysical theories.

Law of Reversals

The Law of Reversals states that ‘anything that can be done can be undone, or can be done in reverse’. There’s actually a similar theory within physics. When you assume time is not a linear progression and can be moved through either way, by changing the flow of time anything that happens becomes its own reversal. In other words if you were to build a house, to someone going backwards in time you would be destroying that house. Meanwhile if you got a wrecking ball and destroyed the house, to someone going backwards in time you would be building that house with the wrecking ball.

Of course we don’t need time travel in order to make the Law of Reversals work. Anything that is created can be destroyed, and anything that is done can be undone.

In regards to practical magic, the Law of Reversals tells us that there is no such thing as a perfect spell. It is impossible to cast a spell that can not be undone by another practitioner. At the same time the Law of Reversals tells us that a practitioner cannot cast a spell which cannot be defended against.

This means that any spell cast is going to have a flaw. There’s going to be a way to stop that spell and to reverse the effects of the spell after it is cast. To prove this we only have to imagine ourselves viewing time in reverse, in which case the practitioner who cast the spell is actually undoing it.

This also means that whenever we cast a spell, even if it is a good spell with a proven track record, we should be prepared for the eventuality that will not work because someone else will figure out how to break it. This means if we cast a death spell on someone, we should be prepared for the possibility that the victim may survive the spell in which case we’ll most likely have a pissed off magician who is powerful enough to counter our spells coming after us for revenge. It also means that if a magician uses something protective, like a shield, to defend themselves, they should be prepared for a situation where that protection will not work.

Lastly if you think someone has cast a spell or curse against you that you cannot break, you haven’t thought about the problem hard enough. There is a solution to the problem and a way in which you can break the spell.

And by spell, of course, I mean any kind of magic, not just the specific kinds of ritual magic that are usually categorized as spells. Even something done entirely psionically can still be broken or undone.

Law of Opposites

The Law of Opposites states that ‘for everything that exists there is also an opposite thing’. I’ve written extensively in other articles about the creation of the universe and the idea of singularity, duality, and triplicity. It’s a very complicated subject, one I’m not going to get too into right now, however if you would like to learn more about the theory behind this law I suggest looking at my article on element theory, as I think that one explains the idea better than anything else I’ve ever written.

Basically one of the first things that came into existence was duality. This happened when the first pair of opposites, creation and division, came into being without any precedence. Since then everything that has come into existence in the universe has been made using the parts that already exist. Everything is based off combining and dividing that which came before it. Because duality is one of the first things that came into existence it has been intertwined into everything that exists.

So everything in existence comes in pairs of opposites. We have creation and division. We have man and woman. We have fire and water. For every thing there is an opposite thing.

This law doesn’t really have many practical applications in magic. It does help to explain the Law of Reversals and why that law works as it does. The law also tells us that for anything we find, an opposite thing also exists. It also means that if we prove something to be true, its opposite something also has to be true.

Frazer’s Laws of Sympathetic Magic

The Laws of Sympathetic Magic are two laws which were proposed by anthropologist Sir James George Frazer in his book the Golden Bough. It’s important to note that Frazer was not writing as a practicing magician. His book, the Golden Bough, was meant as a study of the magical beliefs of various cultures from an anthropological perspective. His laws of sympathetic magic were two beliefs that he saw appearing again and again through out different cultures as a way to describe how magic works.

-Law of Contagion or Contact

The Law of Contagion is one of Frazer’s two laws. Frazer never gives an exact definition of the law, but it is sometimes surmised as ‘any two objects that have been in contact with each other will continue to act upon each other after contact is broken’. The law is better stated as ‘any two things which have been in contact with each other will continue to remain in contact with each other indefinitely, or until both things are destroyed.’

Basically the law tells us that if two things have been in contact with each other, one of those things can be used to affect the other. For instance if you shake hands with someone tomorrow, there is now a link between you and that person, and that person can now cast spells on you through that link. In the same way if you had a personal object that belonged to another person, like say a lock of their hair or a piece of their clothing, you could then cast spells on them through that object.

The law seems to imply that physical contact needs to have happened, but that isn’t the case. If two people are in the same room and one looks at the other then a bit of spiritual contact has occurred and there is an energy link established between them. This also means that the Law of Contagion can apply to things which are entirely non-physical, such as between a person and a spirit.

It may also seem as if modern technology has somehow changed this law or maybe started to disprove it. Hundreds of years ago contact meant that people had to physically be in the same place, but now we can contact each other through other methods. There are telephones, and email, and now video conferencing. It would seem logical that in order for two things to continue to have an effect on each other they would need to be in the same place at the same time. Yet we know, through practice, that we establish a link with someone when we talk on the phone, or when we email someone, and that these links can be used to cast spells through. This would seem to imply that there’s something about the law of contagion we don’t understand, or that the law is the wrong explanation for the phenomena.

However contact at a distance isn’t really new technology. People have been able to do it since the invention of the written alphabet. People are always writing books and letters to contact others who are far away. And for magicians who lived thousands of years ago links were being created with these books and letters in the same way that links are created with telephone calls and emails today.

Distant contact is still contact. By reading a book you create a link to the author, and you do the same when you read an email. The reason why this works is because you can create multiple links through different things to form a chain in order to get from point A to point B.

Suppose we have two magicians, Gandalf and Merlin. Gandalf and Merlin meet at the local Pagan meet-up and shake hands. Gandalf now has a link to Merlin and he can cast spells on him. Merlin meanwhile has a girlfriend, Lilith, which Gandalf has never met before. Obviously Merlin has a link to Lilith. Gandalf can now also cast spells on Lilith through his link with Merlin. The link goes in a chain from Gandalf to Merlin to Lilith.

When a person sends you an email, you make a link to that specific email appearing on your computer screen. That email is a copy of an earlier email, and the email you have has a link to the email it was copied from. If you follow the path the email was sent from it will move from copy to copy to copy, each copy being linked to the copy that came before it. Eventually you will find the link to the original email which exists on the sender’s computer. This email will in turn link to the original sender. Thus the link is formed between you two.

Before I get into an explanation of why the Law of Contagion works, I’d like to talk about its practical applications. First off the Law of Contagion explains how we can use an object that was once connected to a person, such as a lock of their hair, in order to cast a spell on them. That’s the most basic understanding of the law. Secondly the law explains that we can magically affect people we have been in contact with but are no longer in contact with, and it even explains how we can do this despite not being in physical contact with them. Finally the law tells us that objects which have previously been connected to us can be used to attack us. This means that if we want to be safe from these types of attacks, and this is really a personal choice and one that I don’t agree with, then we need to either destroy objects that we’ve been in contact with after we’re done with them or we need to obfuscate our connection to these objects.

Now how does this law work? Why can we still be affected by objects that we are no longer in contact with? Remember how in the Law of Reversals we talked about the concept of time being non-linear and that we can move backwards and forwards in it (I actually go more into this a little bit later on)? Because of this we can send spells backwards in time to the point of contact in order to find a person.

Say for instance you come over to my house and touch my wand. There is now a second in time where your hand was on my wand. I can now cast a spell through my wand that goes backwards in time to the point where you touched my wand. It then has a connection to you, hops over to you, follows you on your journeys until it reaches the present where it will activate and be cast.

Most magicians, when they cast spells on someone using an object they previously possessed don’t realize that this whole process of the spell going backwards through time and then coming back to the present is happening, but that is the technical process through which the spell works.

You may have already realized another hole in this theory. Although you may be able to take a wand that someone touched for just a second and cast as spell on them, it’s unlikely that you’d be able to do that. In practice it would be very difficult if it’s even possible. However if you were to take a beloved childhood toy or a lock of someone’s hair it would be much easier to do. A person’s connection to the object has a direct correlation to how easy it is to cast the spell. If this process were really occurring via time travel it wouldn’t make a difference if this was an object they had for years and loved with all their heart or if it was something they touched for a second and then forgot about. There is still that moment of contact which the spell is looking for.

The problem is, even if you go backwards in time, how do you find the person? We don’t need to know where they existed spatially, we need to know where they existed in time and at what point they were in physical contact with the object. We do this by sensing their energy. If they so much as touched the object they left some small traceable amount of energy on it. When we find the energy they left on the object, when that energy peaks and it’s at its strongest that’s the point where they were in direct contact with the object and that’s the point where the spell can jump from the object over to them.

Obviously the more energy they were pumping into an object the easier it will be to sense the point where they were touching the object. If you can sense the point where I left a small traceable amount of energy on a rock I accidentally kicked while walking down the street ten years ago, you’re a remarkable magician. You’re much better at sensing energy then me, and very few magicians would be able to do that. However if you can’t find a point of contact using a lock of my hair or a beloved childhood toy of mine, then you aren’t much of a magician at all.

-Law of Similarity

The Law of Similarity is Frazer’s other law, and Frazer outright states this law, which is ‘like produces like’. Right away the Law of Similarity seems, well, similar to the Law of Attraction. The Law of Similarity is founded in the same ideas as the Law of Attraction, and the two laws are entirely consistent with each other.

When we say like produces like what we’re talking about is cause and effect. Basically what we’re saying is that if two actions are in some way similar then there outcomes will also be in some way similar. Logically this makes perfect sense and it is consistent with what we understand about physics.

Suppose for instance you have two individuals, Speed Racer and Racer X. Both Speed Racer and Racer X get into separate head on collisions with drunk drivers. These two head on collisions are not going to be exactly the same, but they are similar and the end results will be similar. There is a good chance that both Speed Racer and Racer X will receive some serious injuries in the collision, and there’s even a chance that both may die. This is also true of both drunk drivers that hit them. And it’s almost certain that both Speed and X’s cars are completely totaled. Of course there’s no guarantee that just because the actions were similar that the outcome will be the same. For instance maybe Speed survives with a pair of broken legs, but Racer X is paralyzed for life. Maybe the fellow who hit Racer X survives and ends up going to prison for a DUI, where as the guy who hit Speed dies at the point of impact. The outcomes may change, but they will still be similar outcomes.

In terms of magic the Law of Similarity explains why when we do something symbolically it results in an actual physical occurrence. For instance, as with the case of the Hollywood portrayal of the voodoo doll, if we take a pin and stick it into a poppet, that act can cause our ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend to keel over in pain as if a proportionally sized needle were sticking into our ex-loved ones stomach. The act of sticking a needle into a poppet is similar to the act of sticking a giant needle into our ex, and so the end result should be similar.

Anyone whose tried to do the voodoo doll thing has probably found out that, by itself at least, sticking a pin into a poppet does not cause our ex pain. Sticking a poppet with a normal pin is definitely similar to sticking our ex with a giant one, therefor the end result should be similar, and it is. In the first instance a needle goes through our poppet and splits it open. In the second instance a needle goes through our ex and splits them open. This is the same as our earlier example where Speed only breaks his legs, yet in a similar situation Racer X is paralyzed for life.

Does this mean that the Law of Similarity is entirely useless in regards to magic? No. It just means that you have to do more than just take a similar action in order to produce the results you want. In the voodoo doll example, a connection must be made between our doll and our ex, and that connection needs to be specifically designed to allow the end results of actions taken against the doll to occur to our ex. Once such a connection is made, you can hack away at the doll all day long.

Of course the voodoo doll is a very specific and odd example. Most of us will never have a need to use a voodoo doll, and there are honestly better ways to go about hurting people magically anyways. But some degree of symbolic action usually appears in any kind of ritual magic. For example a simple cleansing ritual involves taking a shower and having the water wash away any outside influences we may have picked up. The ritual is meant to clean us of energies and enchantments and spirits that may be connected to us, and it works because soap and water is used to clean dirt off of our bodies. Many rituals start by having the practitioner draw a circle around themselves in the dirt for protection and empowerment. Drawing a shape in the dirt offers the practitioner no actual protection and doesn’t give them any additional power. However the circle drawn on the ground is similar to a protective or empowering circle cast by the practitioner, and if properly enchanted that circle drawn in the dirt can offer the practitioner some sort of magical protection.

For the most part the simple act of performing a symbolic action will not create an actual result. In order for a symbolic act to resolve into an intended result the act needs to be properly enchanted, connected, and/or directed magically so that the symbolic action not only produces a result, but also produces the intended result and does so upon the intended target. Sometimes though a symbolic action will bring about an actual result without any intent from the practitioner. For example, if proper precautions aren’t taken, taking a shower, all by itself, can wash away some of the external energy you’ve taken in. This does sometimes happen due to the Law of Similarity, although these accidental results usually are not as strong or as consistent as a true magical ritual would be, in this case an actual cleansing ritual instead of just taking a shower.

Secondly the Law of Similarity let’s us predict the outcome of our actions by allowing us to compare those actions to other actions that we already know the outcome to. For example I know if I take my knife and stab my curtain with it and then pull down I’ll cut a hole in my curtain. If you want proof of this, do an experiment on your own curtain and see if you can cut a hole in it.

Because my knife will cut through a curtain I can assume that my knife should be able to cut through other things too. Suppose I wanted to make a hole in reality and cut a pathway into the spirit world or some other world. Reality is a lot like my curtain. In fact the thing that separates the physical world from the spirit world is called the veil, and a curtain is a kind of veil. If I stab reality and pull down with my knife, I should theoretically be able to cut a hole into that the same way I cut a hole into my curtain.

Of course in order to cut a hole into reality, unlike cutting a hole in my curtain, I’m going to need to do some visualization and probably have a little bit of intent, where as I can accidentally cut a hole in my curtain without intent or visualization, which I have actually done before. But ultimately whether it’s a curtain or reality the same act, stabbing and pulling down, is going to tear a hole in either. Because I already know that the knife will tear a hole in the curtain, I can predict that it should be able to tear a hole in reality because like produces like.

Law of Repeatable Achievements

The Law of Repeatable Achievements states that ‘any event or phenomena which has occurred can be reproduced so long as all relevant variables are also reproduced.’ The Law also states that ‘If a very specific variable is used in order for the original event or phenomena to occur, that variable may be changed and the event will still be reproduced so long as the new value meets all of the same relevant conditions of the old value’.

It may seem complicated, but the law pretty much says that if it was done once it can be done again, and if someone else is able to do it you can do it too.

The law starts out by telling us that anything that has happened can happen again. There is no such thing as a one-time event in the universe. For instance if we assume that the resurrection of Christ were true, that would mean that it is possible for a person to resurrect themselves from the dead. The fact that Christ managed to achieve that accomplishment proves that it is achievable. Furthermore Christ’s resurrection can not be a one-time event. Well it could be if he’s the only person who ever resurrects himself, but that doesn’t have to be the case. The resurrection was not something that could only occur once at one specific time during the entire history of the universe. The resurrection is a repeatable action.

This first part is very important, because it tells us that if we’re able to do something once, we should be able to do it again. The fact that we’ve done it once proves that it’s possible for us to do it. If you cast a spell, and the spell is successful, assuming all relevant variables are the same, if you cast that spell a second time it will also be successful.

The second part tells us that very specific variables may be changed, and that the achievement will still be attainable so long as the new value of the variable meets all of the same relevant conditions of the old value. Usually when we say very specific variable we mean a very specific person, although it can also mean a specific object, place, or time.

Going back to the resurrection as an example, Jesus Christ is not the only person who can resurrect himself. The fact that Christ achieved self-resurrection not only proves that such an act is possible, but it also proves that people other than Christ can self-resurrect themselves. However in order to self-resurrect oneself a person must meet all of the relevant conditions that Christ met. This may mean having completed some mystery tradition concerned with resurrection. This may mean having a considerable amount of power and knowledge, at least enough to perform a multitude of smaller feats like walking on water and casting demons into pigs. This may mean having twelve guys who follow you around everywhere. Then again having twelve apostles may be completely irrelevant and not matter at all. Without knowing how Christ achieved self-resurrection it’s impossible to determine which variables were relevant.

A very specific variable may also refer to an object. For example a magician may have a very old and empowered wand with which he casts magical spells. Although the wand may be the source of that magician’s power, the spells could still be cast without that specific wand, although one might still need a wand which was created and empowered in the same or a similar manner. A very specific variable may also refer to a specific place. For instance if a ritual done at a place considered magical, like Stonehenge, is successful that same ritual should be successful when done at other locations. However the new location may need to be as magically powerful as Stonehenge is, and it may need to have a Stonehenge like structure built upon it. Lastly a very specific variable can refer to a point in time. In other words there isn’t going to be only one day in the history of the universe where a specific act can be performed. Of course things like the magical days and hours, the specific alignment of the planets and stars, and even whether it’s daytime or nighttime can all have an effect on the spell.

When the two parts of repeated achievability are combined together it tells us that it is possible to repeat any act done by any previous magician. It might not be easy to repeat the act, and it may involve years of training, discipline, and the accumulation of large amounts of knowledge and power, but the act is an achievable goal.

This means that the extraordinary feats of Jesus Christ, Aleister Crowley, Oedipus, Siddhartha Gautama, or anyone else are all achievements that we could possibly achieve ourselves.

Adept’s Law

The Adept’s Law simply states that ‘an adept is able to do whatever they wish so long as it is within their own power to do so.’

What this means is that an adept is not confined by any law, group, hierarchy, or religious dogma. An adept is in no way required to follow the instructions or beliefs of another, regardless of what their relationship may be. The adept’s power and status as an adept is internally derived from within themselves and not subjected to or dependent on any outside force, and as such they do not serve unless they chose to do so.

Basically it means that an adept gets to do whatever they want, that there are no rules that confine their actions, and that they do not have superiors who can command them.

This does not mean that adepts are law breakers or that adepts do not follow a moral code. An adept may chose to follow rules created by others, such as the law of the land, either because they find it convenient to do so, or because they believe they will get something out of it, or because they actually agree with the law. Likewise they may impose a personal moral code upon themselves and then choose to follow it. In the same way they may chose to follow someone else or follow someone else’s commands. However this is always a choice the adept makes, and the adept is always aware that they are making this choice, and they are under no obligation to follow any rules or commands.

Logically this makes sense. After all we all have the choice to do whatever we want. Anyone can, for instance, break the law. However there will be consequences if you’re caught breaking the law.

Within magical groups though this right to freewill is sometimes forgotten. Sometimes members assume that they must follow the leadership of the group, or that religious dogma and not a personal choice to follow said dogma is what controls their actions.

Worse sometimes groups promote the idea that an adept’s power or status is granted through the group and can be stripped away by the group. In this instance an adept is supposedly at the mercy of their superiors to retain their power and status as an adept. In this sort of situation a theory typically develops that an appeal to higher authority can be made to prove an adept incorrect in their actions and force them to follow certain rules and regulations.

An adept is someone who is adept at magic, and success with magic is largely dependent upon the acquisition of power. The self-realization that a person can do whatever they want, and they aren’t confined to the rules and ideas imposed on them by others, is a major source of empowerment. Without that realization and subsequent empowerment it is impossible for a person to be strong enough to be adept at magic, and so any adept must already have come to that self-realization. Which means that every adept always acts with the knowledge that they can do whatever they want, and they don’t have to follow anyone else’s opinion on what they should do.

Rules of Magic

Magical rules are facts which are not as strong as laws. With any rule there are usually one or more issues that prevent it from becoming a law. It may be an idea that makes logical sense and is consistent with the laws of magic, yet it only works some of the time, which implies that there is some portion of the theory which is not fully understood. It may be an observable phenomena that is always true, yet there doesn’t exist any logical explanation for why it’s true (which would also make it more difficult to apply the rule to experimentation or practical use). It may also be contradictory to the laws of magic, which would also imply that there is some portion of the theory which is not yet understood. Or there may be a contrary explanation to the rule, and neither of the two explanations has been fully proven or disproved.

Rule of Spatial Distance

The Rule of Spatial Distance states that despite appearances, ‘every point in the universe is right next to every other point’. Right away there are some obvious problems with this rule.

First off this rule contradicts the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction tells us that different things are in different locations, and that the location a thing inhabits is based on its qualities and the other things it is attracted to.

Secondly the rule contradicts what we know of physics. We know that location is a real thing. We know that spatial distances are real and they exist, and they have a very real effect on us. We don’t have to worry about accidentally walking into the sun, because it’s not going to happen.

What the rule of spatial distances is trying to explain is the fact that outside of one’s line of sight, spatial distance has no effect on magic. Being able to see someone or something, or even having them in a proximity where you could conceivably see them assuming you had perfect vision and there were no objects blocking you (in a closed space generally anyone within the same room as you), makes casting a spell on them easier. Once a person or object is moved outside the magician’s line of sight casting the spell becomes more difficult. However no matter how far outside of a person’s line of vision the object or person is moved the difficulty of the spell is consistent.

It is just as easy to cast a spell on someone on the other side of the world as it is to cast a spell on someone who lives in your neighborhood. In fact assuming all environmental variables remain consistent, it’s just as easy to cast a spell on a spirit in another world as it is to cast a spell on a spirit in this world. This is an observable phenomena that holds true.

What we don’t understand is why this is the case. Obviously the theory that spatial distance is an illusion doesn’t hold true, because there is no other evidence supporting this idea and the idea contradicts not only the Law of Attraction but also most of the laws of physics.

The Rules of Time

–The First Rule of Time

The First Rule of Time states that ‘time does not progress within a single direction but can be moved through in either direction’. This concept was touched upon in the Law of Reversals, and within that discussion it was mentioned that a similar idea exists within physics. Just to clarify the rule it states that the perception that time is moving forward is an illusion and that time may be moved through forward or backwards.

Of course this concept, that movements can be made either forward or backwards in time, opens the door to a lot of magical theory concerning time travel. A lot of this theory though is far from proven, and it’s far from being classified as a rule. I’m not going to completely discount the feasibility of time travel, but very few magicians out there are using magic to literally move themselves through time. It’s a fine goal to have, and potentially possible, but one that is going to be relevant to very few magical practitioners.

However in terms of more practical magic, the Rule of Time tells us that the nature of the past is the same as the nature of the future. Past and future are entirely interchangeable concepts because these concepts switch when the direction you’re moving through time changes. For example I’m writing this article in 2011. My first blog post meanwhile was in 2006. Because I’m traveling forward through time right now, and a forward progression is the way in which I’m perceiving the time continuum right now, my first blog post was made almost five years in the past. However if I were to be traveling backwards in time my perception would be reversed, and my first blog post wouldn’t be made until five years into the future. Actually by my perception that would be the point where my last blog post was deleted. But the point is that when traveling and perceiving time as moving backwards, what should be the past is actually the future, and what was the future is now the past.

That means that whatever is proven true of the future must be true of the past, and vice-versa. If we don’t subscribe to a theory that assumes we have no freewill because everything is predestined and the future is written in stone, then the alternative theory which must be true is that the future is mutable and can be changed based on our choices. If the future is changeable, the past must also be changeable. If we subscribe to a theory that the future is in constant flux and always changing until the point where it turns into the present because our choices and decisions will always be in flux until the moment they are finally made, then we must also subscribe to the theory that once the present moment ends and it becomes the past it ceases to be stable and goes into flux and is constantly changing.

In practice we see that this idea of the past and future being mutable holds true. The past is always changing. It’s not written in stone. It only seems like the past is written in stone because whenever the past changes our memories of the past also change. However practitioners who have properly trained their minds for clarity and focus can sometimes manage to pull forth memories of the past as it used to be rather than as it now exists.

Since the past is changeable and the past is always changing we, as magicians, can change the past. Spells can be cast to change the outcome of events which have already occurred in the past in the same way that spells can be cast to change the outcome of events which are going to occur in the future. For example if you were capable of casting a spell that would make you win the lottery next week, you could also cast that spell into the past instead of the future so that you would win the lottery last week.

Actually a lot of magicians frequently cast spells into the past without even noticing it. Take for an example a magician who wants a particular book. Say for instance it’s Cunningham’s Wicca For the Solitary Practitioner. This magician doesn’t want to have to order the book and wait for it, they want to read it today, so they need to get it at a brick and mortar store. They also don’t want to be driving around all day looking for a copy. So instead they go to their local Barnes & Noble book store, and while sitting in the parking lot they do a little psionic manifestation magic. It’s a simple and common sort of spell that makes the book appear on the store shelf. The magician then enters the store, the book is on the shelf, and they purchase it.

A spell like that is actually very effective. It doesn’t, however, make the book magically appear on the store shelf. That sort of spell would be much more difficult to do, and if a magician is capable of that sort of magic they are usually going to be smart enough to bypass the store all together and make the book appear in their home. All the magician did was increase the likelihood that the store would have the book in stock. Ideally they increased that likelihood to 100%. The thing is though, books don’t appear on store shelves instantly. In order for that book to be there someone in the store would have had to have ordered it. It then would have had to of been shipped to the store. Then someone else would have to stock it. And finally anyone else who saw the book, prior to the magician coming to the store, would have had to of decided not to buy it. All together it would have had to of taken a minimum of two weeks for that book to appear on the shelf. So in order to have the book appear the magician had to manipulate a series of events going back at least as far as two weeks prior to when they first cast the spell.

-The Second Rule of Time

The Second Rule of Time states that, “between two points in time there does not exist a single linear path, but rather between those two points there exists a multitude of points leading to a multitude of different destinations”.

At a glance this rule may be a bit difficult to comprehend, especially since most people are used to looking at time as a linear progression from one point to another.

Imagine time is like a road. We’re going to take two points. One point will be Monday, and the other point will be Thursday. Right now it’s Monday. That’s our starting point. Our end point is Thursday which is three days away. So imagine time as a road which connects Monday to Thursday, and this road is three days long.

All of us can imagine starting at Monday and walking down that road until we reach Thursday. Most of us can even imagine walking to Tuesday and then deciding that we don’t want to go to Thursday anymore, so we start walking back to Monday (in which case we’re going backward in time as per the First Rule of Time).

However the Second Rule of Time tells us that there isn’t just one road between Monday and Thursday. There are lots of different roads between those two points. And some of those roads may get us to Thursday quicker then other roads. Not only that, but there are some roads where we’ll never even reach Thursday.

As an alternate example, imagine a road going between two points. As an example I’ll use the I-15 which connects Las Vegas to Bakersfield. Las Vegas is my Monday and Bakersfield is my Thursday. There isn’t however just one road between Vegas and Bakersfield. I could for instance take Old Farm Road from Vegas down to Primm, and then take the I-15 to Bakersfield. If I had a plane I could even travel North instead of South and circumference the globe eventually ending up on Bakersfield. Not only that, but I don’t have to even go to Bakersfield. I can get off at Primm or Jean. Or I can get onto a different road and eventually end up in New York City. In fact I can even build myself a rocket between Vegas and Bakersfield and blast myself to the moon. Just as their exist multiple paths and alternate destinations between any two points that have distinct locations in space, there are multiple paths and alternate destinations between any two points that have distinct locations in time.

This rule starts to explain why a lot of magic and physics works like it does. For instance sometimes time seems to go by faster and sometimes it seems to go by slower. This is because there are multiple paths between two points, and some of those points are going to be slower and some are going to be faster. Usually when a person is in a situation in which they are carefree and having fun they feel as if time goes by faster. Meanwhile if they are bored or stressed out or otherwise upset time usually seems to go by slower. People who on average live very stressful or miserable lives usually seem to physically age faster than those who on average live lives that they enjoy.

This rule also tells us that time doesn’t necessarily flow from the past to the future. We can skip around time. We can start in Monday, never even go to Tuesday, and still end up at Wednesday. Or we can start in Monday, go back to last Saturday, and then jump ahead to next Friday. In fact we can start out in Monday and totally leave linear time altogether never again appearing in the normal timeline.

This in turn explains how, when we use magic that manipulates the time continuum, there is sometimes weird phenomena where time jumps around.

Observationally we know that the first and second rules of time are true. We know that magically we can cast spells that change the past. We also know that if we start manipulating the time continuum we can actually jump around in time and force the continuum to move in different directions at different spatial locations. However what we don’t yet understand is why time is built like it is. There isn’t much good magical theory out there concerning the structure of the time continuum and why it is built as it is, and the little bit of theory that is out there is largely unproven and typically highly derivative of science fiction novels and movies. Ultimately it will probably require a multitude of different rules and laws to be developed and then proven in order to begin to understand precisely how time operates and why it operates that way.

Rule of Dream Achievements

The Rule of Dream Achievements states that, “anything which has been achieved within a dream can also be achieved within the physical world.” This means that if last night you had a dream that you flew through the air like Superman, it’s possible for you to fly in the physical world. It also means that if you dreamt you showed up to school naked last night, it’s possible that one day you may forget to put clothes on before leaving your house.

You might be thinking that this all seems absurd. After all a lot of people have dreamt that they can fly, yet you don’t really see very many people flying around. It’s possible that you yourself have dreamt that you can fly, but if you jump out your window right now all that’s going to happen is you’ll fall to the ground.

Just because it’s possible for you to do something doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy to do. For instance Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt ran 100 M in 9.58 seconds. Not only does that mean it’s possible for the human body to run 100 M in 9.58 seconds, but it’s specifically possible for Usain Bolt to run 100 M in 9.58 seconds. The man actually did it once. However I’m sure it wasn’t easy for Usain Bolt to run that fast. I think he spent his whole life training for that nine and a half second run, and in the two years since he set that record he hasn’t been able to break it. It’s possible to fly through the air through your own power as you did in your dream. Like Bolt’s world record run though it’s going to take a lot of work, discipline, and probably luck too.

It’s also important to note that this rule does not imply that something is going to be as easy to achieve in the physical world as it is in a dream. Something like flight can be very easily, and often accidentally, achieved in a dream. That really isn’t the case in the physical world.

Rule of the Reversible Flow of Energy

The Rule of the Reversible Flow of Energy states that, ‘Any force that can be moved in a single direction along a set path can also be moved in the opposite direction along that same path.’

Usually when we’re talking about a force in regards to magic we’re talking about energy, however this rule technically applies to any kind of force. What the rule is saying is that if energy, or a byproduct of energy such as a magical attack, can move from point A to point B, then that energy can also move from Point B to Point A along the exact same path.

This means that when a magician magically attacks someone they must leave themselves open to being attacked through the exact same path. This also means that if you block magic from affecting you, for example by shielding, you also stop your own magic from being able to affect the world outside of your shield. The moment you create a filter in your shield so your magic can get beyond it you also create a doorway through which harmful magic can now enter.

The Rule of the Reversible Flow of Energy tells us that it is impossible to completely defend ourselves spiritually without completely cutting ourselves off from the spiritual world. The rule also tells us that if a magician is attacked, that magician can definitely counterattack through the same pathway that is being used to attack them.

Rights of Magic

Rights are kind of like rules, in fact I’d classify them as a specific type of rule. First off magical rights, like civil rights or any other kind of right, is something that you are granted by virtue  of existing. Sometimes you may have to meet some other criteria, such as being incarnate in this world or being the first spirit to possess the body you’re currently residing in, but for the most part these rights are fairly easy to obtain. Unlike civil rights though these rights are not granted by some higher government authority, they can’t be taken away by that higher authority, and you don’t have to go to court to defend them.

The evidence for rights are based primarily on observation. Magicians know these rights exist because we’ve observed them to exist. Also, in practical application, all of these rights work as they should 100% of the time. Since these rights have been observed to exist and they’ve been proven within practical application you might be wondering why I categorized these things as rights or rules and not laws.

The problem is there is no theory behind these rights. We know they exist, but we have no idea why they exist or how they came into being. Furthermore they don’t even make sense. A spirit cannot possess your body. There is no reason why a spirit shouldn’t be able to possess your body, but it can’t. But if you happen to say out loud that any spirit in the room can possess your body, your body can now be possessed by any spirit in the room. Why do the physical laws concerning whether or not something else can possess your body change simply because you’ve decided to relinquish that right by making a vocal statement?

Outside of falling back on intelligent design, none of these rights make sense. Why we have them doesn’t make sense, and the fact that most of them can easily be relinquished doesn’t make sense either. With out some sort of logical and proven theory to support these rights they cannot be laws.

Right of Freewill

The Right of Freewill is granted to anything which is sentient and has a connection to a higher source. A connection to a higher source pretty much means that a thing has a soul; that it’s connected into higher planes of existence. Pretty much anything which is sentient, such as an incarnate being or an incarnate animal or an intelligent spirit will have a connection to a higher source. Things that wouldn’t have a higher connection include inanimate objects which are not possessed by an intelligent spirit, thought forms and egregores, and some types of vampires.

The Right to Freewill states that ‘a sentient entity with a connection to a higher source has the right to take actions or refrain from taking actions as per their own personal choices’.

This pretty much means that you, being a sentient entity with a connection to a higher source, can do whatever you want. No one else can truly control your choices and your actions. For instance you can continue reading this article, or you can shut off your computer right now, or you can start writing me a nasty comment in response to this article, or you can run down the street naked. All of these options are open to you, and there’s nothing stopping you from doing any of them right now. Of course if you run down the street naked there’s a good chance you’ll end up in jail.

The Right to Freewill does not free you from facing the consequences to your actions. You can also agree to relinquish your Right to Freewill. For instance most of us agree to follow the laws of the country we live in and in exchange we receive the benefits of living within a lawful society and the benefit of not being thrown in jail. You can also be tricked or coerced (even by force) into giving up your Right to Freewill. For instance most governments have a police force ready to arrest you if you make the choice not to obey the laws of the land. Some governments will even kill you if you make certain illegal choices. In this instance the government is using force to coerce its citizens into relinquishing their right to freewill.

Magically speaking this right is somewhat similar to the Adept’s Law. The right also tells us that other spirits and people we may meet cannot directly control our actions. Even the gods cannot directly control our actions and make us do what they want us to do. This right also tells us that we have the opportunity to decide our own fate and change our future.

Right Against Possession

The Right Against Possession is stated as ‘a foreign spirit cannot possess a physically incarnated body which is still possessed by its original spirit without first obtaining the permission of a spirit already possessing said body.’

Unless you are a walk-in spirit that is possessing the body you’re using to read this article on a computer screen, you are the original spirit which possesses your incarnate body, and so this right applies to you.

The Right Against Possession pretty much says that no other spirit can enter into or possess your body without your permission. What does permission mean? Well it can mean that you said out loud that a spirit may possess your body. It can also mean that you said this in a channel. And it can also mean that you have a strong intention in your mind to be possessed by a spirit.

This permission can be somewhat conditional, meaning you can limit it to only certain spirits. You can say only a specific spirit can enter your body. Or you can say that only a certain type of spirit can enter your body. Or you can say that only spirits in a specific location can enter your body. When you give a spirit this type of conditional permission, the spirit doesn’t have to meet your conditions, you just have to believe that it does. For instance if you said only the spirit of your dead grandmother was allowed to possess your body, a spirit other than your dead grandmother could possess your body so long as you believed that spirit to be your dead grandmother.

There are some theories that you can also put limitations on what the spirit is allowed to do once it possesses you. This theory shows up in systems like automatic writing where the practitioner only allows the spirit to take control of their hand. Sometimes this seems to work, however the method is not foolproof, and the limitations of automatic writing are usually derived through the power of the practitioner and not through limitations put upon the permission given to the spirit. Likewise limitations on how long a spirit can possess a person’s body do nothing. If you give a spirit permission to enter or possess your body you pretty much give it carte blanche to do whatever it wants with your body.

Of course you can always forcefully limit what a spirit can do in your body or even completely remove it from your body. Since you are the original spirit that possessed your body you always have a right to take back control of your body, and you don’t need permission from a possessing spirit in order to do this, even if you’ve already completely left the body and decide to come back later.

Valid permission for a possession can also be obtained by a spirit through trickery or coercion. A spirit could for instance offer you millions of dollars if you let it take possession of your body for a while. Once it has permission, the spirit is not obligated to fulfill this promise in order to keep possessing your body. In fact the spirit can still possess your body if it had no intention of ever getting you millions of dollars, or even if getting you millions of dollars was completely beyond its power. A spirit is allowed to lie and offer you presents, both presents it intends to actually give you and ones that it doesn’t, in order to gain permission. A spirit can even use physical force to gain permission. For instance if a man came up to you tomorrow, put a gun to your head and said that if you didn’t give a certain spirit permission to possess you he was going to kill you, if you give permission to the spirit in that situation it still counts.

Once you give a spirit permission to enter your body or possess you that spirit has permission to possess you so long as it remains in your body. Even if you change your mind later on, it still retains permission. If the spirit completely exits your body for any reason then it usually has to get permission again in order to possess you a second time. There are a couple of exceptions to this though. First off if you haven’t changed your mind about allowing this spirit to possess you then it can come and go as it pleases. The second exception is if you have left your body completely, such as in a walk-in scenario, and there is no spirit possessing your body and your body is still alive, then any spirit can enter into your body.

There is one more exception to the permission rule, and that’s regarding multiple spirits. If you give a spirit permission to enter or possess your body, while that spirit is in you it may give other spirits permission to enter or possess your body. This is actually a fairly rare occurrence though. Beneficial spirits which are continuously possessing you with your continued permission are usually respectful of your wishes regarding other spirits possessing your body along with them, and these spirits usually won’t give anything else permission and will allow you to make the decision. Meanwhile more malicious spirits that have taken control of your body through force or trickery usually don’t want to share that control with other spirits, or end up in a scenario where they may end up having to fight other spirits for control, so they usually will not give anything else permission to enter.

As for its use in practical magic, the Right Against Possession helps us in a couple of ways. It’s obvious use is that it gives us a foolproof way to protect ourselves against becoming possessed. If a practitioner never gives anything permission to possess themselves they never have to worry about a possession. Secondly the right helps us understand what needs to be done if we want to become possessed. For instance if a practitioner wants to do any sort of true mediumship where spirits possess them and use their body to physically communicate with others, then that practitioner would need to clearly be giving the spirits they wish to use permission to possess themselves in order to achieve any kind of success. Lastly if a magician wants to be malicious and forcefully possess another for some reason, this right explains what a magician must go through to do that.

Right of Divine Communion

The Right of Divine Communion is granted to all things. The Right to Divine Communion is also an unalienable right. It cannot be taken away from you by any means. It cannot be forcibly taken away from you. A person cannot cast a spell on you which limits your Right to Divine Communion. In fact the Right to Divine Communion is the reason why a perfect binding spell, where a practitioner is restricted from using any kind of magic, is impossible, because the spell cannot affect magical abilities which are tied to the target’s Right to Divine Communion. In fact you can’t even agree to give up your Right to Divine Communion. Even if you give someone permission to take this right from you, you’ll still retain it.

The Right to Divine Communion states that ‘all things have the right to petition any true deity in any manner they see fit, through prayer or through direct communication, and that these acts of communication cannot be hindered or blocked from their recipient in any way. Furthermore a person has a right to receive both messages and energy from any true deity at the deity’s discretion, and that these messages and energies cannot be hindered or blocked in any way. Also a deity may initiate a communication or direct contact with a person in any way they see fit at their own discretion, and this communication or contact cannot be hindered or stopped in any way.’

Yeah, it’s a long one. Pretty much though the right just says that you’re allowed to send any message you want to a deity, and efforts cannot be made to prevent the deity from receiving the message. Meanwhile the deity may respond, at their discretion, either with a direct communication or by sending you energy, and this too cannot be stopped. Lastly a deity may choose to initiate a communication or direct contact with you, and they cannot be stopped from bringing this communication or contact to you.

As far as practical magic goes, the biggest use of this right is that it gives you a way to break any kind of binding spell that limits your power. Such a spell cannot restrict your connection to the divine, and that connection can be used to break the binding.

The other thing this right tells us is that our connection to the divine is constant and can never be taken away from us. No matter what or what limitations may have been placed on us, we always have the option of initiating divine communion.

Rights of Incarnation

The rights of incarnation are a series of rights that all beings which are currently physically incarnated into a world have so long as they are in the world in which they are physically incarnate. A living person will automatically have all of these rights so long as they are in the world where they are incarnate, however if they leave their world in a non-physical way, such as through astral projection, a person will not carry these rights over into other worlds. Along with people animals, plants, insects, and anything else incarnated into a world has all of these rights. For the most part spirits have none of these rights, but there are some exceptions.

First off angelics are technically incarnated into the worlds they reside in and protect, however the way they are incarnated is a little bit different than how people are incarnated. Still, being technically incarnated, they automatically have all of the rights of incarnation.

The dead, although they are no longer physically incarnate, sometimes retain some or all of the rights of incarnation. This isn’t always the case though, and when dealing with the dead it’s pretty much random if they’ll have any or all of these rights.

Finally certain rights can be transferred onto spirits, and I talk about that with the Right of Transference.

-Right of Existence in a Plane of Being

The Right of Existence in a Plane of Being pretty says that ‘an incarnated being has the right to exist in the plane where they are physically incarnated’. There’s really not much to explain about this right. It pretty much just means that you have the right to be in this world and exist here. You don’t have to ask permission from anything in order to enter the world you’re physically incarnated on, you cannot be blocked from entering the world you’re physically incarnated on, and you can’t be forcefully kicked out of the world you physically reside in.

-Right of Manifestation

The Right of Manifestation states that ‘all incarnate beings have the right to have a physical form on their plane of incarnation which can be seen and interacted with by others incarnated on that same plane of existence’. In other words you have the right to a physically manifested body which others can see and touch.

-Right to Enter Areas

The Right to Enter Areas states that ‘all incarnate beings have the right to enter any area or location on their plane of incarnation so long as it is physically possible for them to do so’. Basically this right says that so long as a person can physically reach a specific location or physically enter a building then they can do so.

-Right of Physical Manipulation

The Right of Physical Manipulation states that ‘all incarnate beings have the right to physically manipulate any and all physical objects on their plane of incarnation’. This right pretty much says a person can physically move things.

-Right of Communication

The Right of Communication states that ‘all incarnate beings have the right to physically communicate with all other beings incarnated on their plane of incarnation so long as it is within the scope of both parties physical and mental limitations to do so’. This right states that so long as a person is physically able to communicate through a particular method (such as speaking), and they understand how to communicate in that way (such as knowing how to speak a language), then they are able to physically communicate with any other incarnate being that is capable of understanding them.

-Right of Dominion

The Right of Dominion states that, ‘Any incarnate being has the right, through declaration, force, or any other means which are available, to claim dominion over an area within their plane of incarnation.’

It sounds confusing, but all the right really says is that a person that is incarnate can have spiritual dominion over an area of land. Spiritual dominion is usually gained by making a declaration of dominion over an area and then enforcing that dominion through force. Dominion may also be achieved, at least partially, through other means as they develop, for instance purchasing a plot of land and then partially enforcing that dominion through the laws of society.

Having obtained dominion over an area a person gains certain privileges over that area. A person who has dominion over an area has the option of completely spiritually controlling that area, including both the type and flow of energy in the area and also which spirits are allowed into the area. The benefits of the right of dominion are however partially diminished when a person or entity gains the Rights of Residence over that same area. Unlike the Rights of Residence however, a person still retains a Right of Dominion when they leave the area.

-First Right of Residence

The First Right of Residence states that ‘Any incarnate person or entity residing within an area has the right to continue to reside within that area’.

The gist of this right is that once a person or spirit comes to inhabit an area, they have the right to continue to inhabit that area indefinitely. The person or spirit can however leave of their own freewill, or they can be physically forced out of the area, at which time they will lose their rights of residence within the area. All this right guarantees is that there is not a natural force within the universe which will remove a person or spirit from an area or location (in contrast there is a physical force which may deny a spirit entrance into an area or location).

However the most important part of the First Right of Residence is that it can be given to another through the right of transference, which I’ll get to momentarily. This means that any person, animal, insect, or spiritual entity residing in a location can allow any other spiritual entity to come into that location.

It should also be noted that in regard to these rights the term residence simply means that a person or entity is currently physically present at the location. It does not mean that the person lives or sleeps at that location.

-Second Right of Residence

The Second Right of Residence states that ‘any incarnate being residing within an area on their plane of incarnation has the right to physically and spiritually use and exploit that area in any way they wish’.

The Second Right of Residence just says that anything incarnated within a world has a right to use and do to that world whatever they want. This right, along with the Third Right of Residence, are the only Rights of Incarnation which cannot be transferred through the Right of Transference.

-Third Right of Residence

The Third Right of Residence states that, ‘in regard to the Second Right of Residence, the rights of use and exploitation of an area by a being currently incarnated in that area’s plane of existence supercede any rights of use and exploitation of an area by a being not currently incarnated in that area’s plane of existence.’

All the Third Right of Residence tells us is that incarnated beings have more of a right to use and exploit this world than purely spiritual beings. This right does not have much practical use, however it does begin to explain why the Rights of Incarnation exist.

-Right of Transference

The Right of Transference states that, ‘any being which currently enjoys any of the Rights of Incarnation has the right to grant any or all of the rights they enjoy, except for the Second and Third Rights of Residence, to any being which resides in the same area or an area they have dominion over and which does not currently enjoy those rights.’

This means that since you, by virtue of being an incarnated being, have all of the Rights of Incarnation and you can grant these rights to different spirits. For instance if there was a spirit living in your house, you could give this spirit the Right of Manifestation, which would allow it to take on a physical form visible to the naked eye. Of course the spirit would still have to be powerful enough to physically manifest and chose to do so even after it gained permission, but prior to gaining permission the spirit would not be able to physically manifest at all. Likewise you can tell a spirit to knock once for yes and twice for no, and in doing so you’re giving the spirit the Right of Physical Manipulation.

This permission can be given to a spirit through a verbal statement. It can also be said psychically. It can also be implied permission. For example when you tell a spirit to knock once for yes and twice for no, it’s implied that you’re giving it the Right to Physical Manifestation, since it needs that right to perform the task which you gave it. The permission can also be granted through intent. Finally the rights can actually be granted through intentionally not caring. For example if you’re aware of the Rights of Incarnation, believe they’re true, and don’t care at all if something manifests in your home, then anything in your home may gain the Right to Manifestation even if you don’t specifically grant this right.

There are some limitations to the Right of Transference, and these limitations are largely dependent on dominion and your point of residence. You cannot grant something a Right of Incarnation if it is located in a place that something other than you or it has dominion over unless you happen to currently also reside in that same place.

This is why you cannot grant the Rights of Incarnation to every single spirit by saying, “I grant every spirit in the world the Rights of Incarnation.” You cannot override someone else’s Right of Dominion, unless you happen to currently reside in the area. You can however grant these rights to any spirit that resides in an area where you or it holds the Right of Dominion. Likewise if you have permission from whatever holds the Right of Dominion over an area, you can grant rights to spirits within that area then. You might be thinking that you can grant rights to spirits which exist in areas where nobody has yet claimed a Right of Dominion, but such a place doesn’t exist in the world. Things like animals and plants and insects can also hold dominion over an area. You might be wondering about lifeless areas like outer space, but these areas are covered too. Collectively, Angelics have a habit of claiming dominion over any available area, and part of the reason for this (besides just controlling these areas), is to limit the Right of Transference.

Summary

Law of Attraction

Like attracts like.

 Hermetic Law 

That which is above is like that which is below, and that which is below is like that which is above.

 Law of Reversals 

Anything that can be done can be undone, or can be done in reverse.

 Law of Opposites 

For everything that exists there is also an opposite thing.

 Frazer’s Laws of Sympathetic Magic 

-Law of Contagion or Contact

 Any two things which have been in contact with each other will continue to remain in contact with each other indefinitely, or until both things are destroyed. 

-Law of Similarity

 Like produces like 

Law of Repeatable Achievements

 Any event or phenomena which has occurred can be reproduced so long as all relevant variables are also reproduced. If a very specific variable is used in order for the original event or phenomena to occur, that variable may be changed and the event will still be reproduced so long as the new value meets all of the same relevant conditions of the old value

Adept’s Law

 An adept is able to do whatever they wish so long as it is within their own power to do so. 

Rule of Spatial Distances

 Every point in the universe is right next to every other point. 

Rules of Time

-First Rule of Time

 Time does not progress within a single direction but can be moved through in either direction. 

-Second Rule of Time

 Between two points in time there does not exist a single linear path, but rather between those two points there exists a multitude of points leading to a multitude of different destinations. 

Rule of Dream Achievements

 Anything which has been achieved within a dream can also be achieved within the physical world. 

Rule of the Reversible Flow of Energy

 Any force that can be moved in a single direction along a set path can also be moved in opposite direction along that same path. 

Right to Freewill

A sentient entity with a connection to a higher source has the right to take actions or refrain from taking actions as per their own personal choices.

 Right Against Possession 

A foreign spirit cannot possess a physically incarnated body which is still possessed by its original spirit without first obtaining the permission of a spirit already possessing said body.

 Right to Divine Communion 

All things have the right to petition any true deity in any manner they see fit, through prayer or through direct communication, and that these acts of communication cannot be hindered or blocked from their recipient in any way. Furthermore a person has a right to receive both messages and energy from any true deity at the deity’s discretion, and that these messages and energies cannot be hindered or blocked in any way. Also a deity may initiate a communication or direct contact with a person in any way they see fit at their own discretion, and this communication or contact cannot be hindered or stopped in any way.

 Rights of Incarnation 

-Right of Manifestation

 All incarnate beings have the right to have a physical form on their plane of incarnation which can be seen and interacted with others incarnated on that same plane of existence. 

-Right to Enter an Area

 All incarnate beings have the right to enter any area or location on their plane of incarnation so long as it is physically possible for them to do so.           

-Right of Physical Manipulation

 All incarnate beings have the right to physically manipulate any and all physical objects on their plane of incarnation. 

-Right of Communication

 All incarnate beings have the right to physically communicate with all other beings incarnated on their plane of incarnation so long as it is within the scope of both parties physical and mental limitations to do so.

-Right of Dominion

 Any incarnate being has the right, through declaration, force, or any other means which are available, to claim dominion over an area within their plane of incarnation.  

-First Right of Residence

 Any incarnate person or entity residing within an area has the right to continue to reside within that area. 

-Second Right of Residence

 Any incarnate being residing within an area on their plane of incarnation has the right to physically and spiritually use and exploit that area in any way they wish. 

-Third Right of Residence

 In regard to the Second Right of Residence, the rights of use and exploitation of an area by a being currently incarnated in that areas plane of existence supercede any rights of use and exploitation of an area by a being not currently incarnated in that area’s plane of existence. 

-Right of Transference

 Any being which currently enjoys any of the rights of incarnation has the right to grant any or all of the rights they enjoy, except for the Second and Third Rights of Residence, to any being which resides in the same area or an area they have dominion over and which does not currently enjoy those rights.

Ritual Magick is Superfluous

Years ago I wrote a ritual for myself. A few days ago I was rewriting the ritual so it could be understood and used by someone else. This is a ritual I’ve used for years and one that I’ve done at least a couple hundred times. As I was writing the ritual I noticed that over half the steps, which I was writing down and explaining so someone else to do them, I no longer performed when I did the ritual.

The ritual is as strong and as effective as its ever been. I don’t need those extra steps, and I don’t usually do them because it saves time. However I still included the steps in the ritual and explained them for the benefit of another. I don’t do this to deny someone else my experience or for the sake of completion, but because those steps are important, and it goes back to the nature of ritual magic.

Ritual magic is always superfluous. For those who may not know exactly what ritual magic is, it’s a broad term which refers to magical acts which require some sort of physical action. This can be as simple as saying a word or phrase that announces your intent or waving your hand, or something very complex that can take multiple people hours to perform and can require days, weeks, months, and even years of prep time. The opposite of ritual magic is psionic magic, which is magic that is performed without any physical action, in other words entirely through the power of ones mind.

There is no magical act that can be done ritually which cannot also be performed psionically. There are also no magical tools which are required to perform any kind of magical act (other than your body, mind, and spirit of course). The actual ritual parts of ritual magic are all unnecessary. Any ritual can be pared down to psionic magic.

Of course there are a lot of advantages to psionic magic. It’s very fast. It requires zero prep time. This also makes it very versatile. It also makes it very efficient. Plus you’ll save money on tools. So why would anyone prefer ritual magic? There are actually a lot of reasons to use ritual magic, and the exact reasons are going to be a bit dependent on the practitioner and what their focus is. I’ll go more in depth into some of those reasons in a moment, but I’d like to take a step back and discuss what all of this means for the practitioner.

As a practitioner of magic, any ritual you do is less efficient than it could be. The fact that it is a ritual means there’s still something in there that doesn’t need to be there. And so with any ritual there’s always something for you to improve. As you do rituals again and again and again you should strive to understand how and why the ritual works. As you do this you should become more and more aware of aspects of the ritual that you no longer need, and you should take them out. You should pare down the ritual until it no longer exists, and at that point you can cast the spell just by wanting it to happen.

Ideally this is the end goal of learning any ritual. It also means that if you’ve been frequently doing a ritual for years, and it’s still as long and as involved as it was when you first started, you’re not reaching you’re full potential. You’re not working to understand and improve the ritual until you really get it, you’re just following instructions.

As someone who is trying to transmit or teach a ritual to someone else, you really have to not give people the benefit of your experience. The fact that you’ve cut out large parts of the ritual and it still works has nothing to do with those parts being unnecessary and everything to do with your personal magical progression.

When you give someone else a ritual you frequently use, at the very least you should give them everything you needed to perform the ritual the first time. You may even need to add in additional parts, because they may not be as adept as you were. This means when you’re teaching or rewriting a ritual, or writing it down for the first time because you’re lazy like me, you have to sort of forget everything you’ve learned and any ability you’ve gained and try to remember what it was like before you ever tried to do this ritual.

Psionic vs Ritual

Just about any spell or ritual you find is going to have at least some minor psionic component to it. Sometimes this is explicitly stated, but more often than not the psionic component is implied and it’s expected that the practitioner will be able to figure it out.

It’s typical that a bit of psionic magic is necessary in a ritual to tie the spell together. However usually psionic aspects are needed in a spell because the ritual writer gave up trying to translate them.

Simple psionics, things like raising small amounts of energy and lowering your shield, can be translated and written into ritual form. It would take a bit of work to do it and you would end up with a complicated ritual to do a simple psionic trick. Meanwhile it’s generally assumed that most magical practitioners will be able to do these simple psionic tricks. They’re not difficult to learn, they’re universal, and really if you want to have any success at magic you need to be able to do this sort of stuff.

A good ritual writer is going to keep going through the ritual, taking out psionic aspects, and translating them into ritual aspects. At some point though they’re going to be breaking down very simple psionics and they’ll throw their hands up in the air and say, “If they can’t do this, I can’t help them.”

Granted there are some spells that can work without any psionic act on the part of the practitioner. There is a variety of reasons why a spell might work, to many to really go through in the scope of this article, but it all really breaks down to spells that work despite the practitioner. Of course this won’t be true of every spell, only certain spells.

Why Use Ritual

You need to know psionics to do magic. Psionic magic is faster, more efficient, and cheaper. So why bother with ritual? Ritual magic actually has a lot of advantages over psionic magic. The specific advantages of a specific ritual are going to be largely dependent on the ritual writer, their understanding of ritual, and what advantages they prefer to exploit. I’ve listed some of the advantages below, however this list is far from inclusive.

You can’t explain psionics: It is impossible, at least as far as I can tell, to adequately explain to someone else how to do a spell psionically. For instance, this a common psionic prosperity spell. What you need to do is draw money that already exists towards you. There’s your spell, go cast it and you’ll be rich for the rest of your life.

I can give you exercises to help you with awareness, energy manipulation, mental clarity, emotional control, and the like. These things are the basic tools of psionics. I can also teach you metaphysical theory so you understand how magic operates. But I cannot give you specific instructions to do a psionic spell. All I can do is tell you what you have to do, and if you don’t already know how to do that and can’t figure it out, there’s nothing else I can do for you. Also if you bought a book from me filled with nothing but ideas for psionic spells, I think you’d be pretty pissed off. And remember, if you’re asking someone for a spell, it’s probably because you don’t know how to do it and can’t figure it out.

The solution is to translate psionic magic into ritual magic, usually with the expectation that the practitioner who receives the ritual will eventually translate it back into psionic magic after performing it enough times.

Of course to do this you need to have a fairly good understanding of both psionic magic and ritual magic and how both operate. Part of this is knowing magical theory, but a good portion of that is insight gained through practical work, mainly breaking rituals down into psionic magic and eventually experimenting with your own rituals so you can understand the relationship between the two. After that you just have to break the spell down into various psionic aspects and then find a ritual equivalent for each aspect.

Rituals provide better focus: Properly written rituals can help the practitioner achieve better states of mental focus, mental clarity, and intent. For instance the simple act of announcing what it is you want to do can greatly improve the chances of success for your spell. It focuses you on your goal, which is now clearly expressed, and it gives you a clear direction. This is just one example of something very simple that can be added to a ritual. There are of course many things that can be added to a ritual to increase focus, and in doing so increase success, some which are fairly complicated.

It makes magic more real: Magical success is somewhat dependent on faith. Not faith in a deity or religion, but faith in yourself, in your abilities, and in the fact that your spells will work as you intend them to.

When you have doubt, when you doubt your magical abilities, or even worse when you doubt that magic is even real at all and start to believe that this is all some fantasy in your head, it has a negative effect on your magical work. And from there it will spiral. The more doubt you have the less success you’ll have, until eventually nothing works and you believe that magic is just another spiritual fantasy practiced by impressionable teenagers.

I’ve gotten a little off track, but for most of us it’s far easier to believe in ritual magic than psionic magic. Ritual magic involves doing certain and specific physical acts to produce a specific intended result, the validity of which is backed by metaphysical theory. We understand this because this basically how we have been taught the universe works. Certain physical acts produce certain results.

Psionic magic on the other hand involves focusing on things, thinking things, feeling things, and possibly manipulating things at an unseen spiritual level, but it doesn’t involve any real action. You can be standing still and apparently doing magic. The people around you won’t even realize you’re doing it. And it becomes very easy to start convincing yourself that all of this is in your head. That you’ve allowed yourself to become impressionable and believe things which aren’t true. That your success is just coincidence. And it’s easier to do this with psionic magic because there is no physical aspect.

It’s also easier to doubt your own success with psionic magic. With ritual magic there is generally a belief that the ritual should work. That the ritual is going to pick up the slack and do a lot of the work. That if you follow the ritual it will succeed. It doesn’t feel so much as if the weight is on you as it is on the ritual. With psionic magic though the weight is entirely on you. You succeed and fail on your own ability, and if you don’t believe you’re strong enough to succeed, you won’t.

Living Spells: I’m assuming that all of my readers know what the term thought form means. It’s a fairly common term in magic that everyone should be familiar with. The basic theory is that expending energy on thinking something causes a spiritual manifestation of that something to appear. Typically this manifestation is brief as it quickly goes through the energy that compromises it. Although things that are thought of a lot, that a lot of energy is expended on, can end up existing for far longer periods of time. They can exist for years, even decades, after it is last thought about. Usually at that point there are many people expending energy on this same thought in order to sustain it for such a long time.

Of course, as with all metaphysics, if you understand the concept well enough you can develop ways to manipulate it to produce the results you want. You can make thought forms of whatever you want, you can give them an above average longevity, and you can even make them far more powerful than normal. Thought forms can even be made sentient (and this happens naturally too). At this point the thought form is thinking for itself, has unlimited potential for development, growth, and learning, and has a soul and connection to higher planes. At that point it ceases to be a thought form and becomes a spirit.

Many magicians read rituals, and then will spend inordinate amounts of times thinking about them, deconstructing them, and generally trying to determine how they work. Rituals are unique from other things we spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about though, because we also actually perform rituals, and on top of that when most of us perform rituals we’re usually working with very large amounts of energy.

This means that quite often powerful thought forms are created from rituals. With ritual that are very popular, like well published rituals that are hundreds of years old or the basic standard rituals of a relatively large religion, these generally have very powerful thought forms out there. In some instances these thought forms have become sentient spirits.

So with a popular ritual somewhere in the universe there is a strong thought form or even spirit of that ritual out there. When you do the ritual and feed energy into it, this spirit or thought form is activated and drawn towards the ritual. It will often times do a lot of the ritual work, which means you end up with a powerful ritual whose success is independent of the practitioner.

Some of the most powerful rituals out there will work even though the practitioner has no magical ability or skill because of this. In fact some don’t even need you to perform the entire ritual. Often times doing just part of the ritual will be enough to trigger the entire process. This is why you’re not supposed to read grimoires out loud. If you happen to stumble upon one of these living spells in there and start speaking it, you can actually trigger the entire spell even though you have no intent to do so, have done no other part of the ritual, and even if you lack the magical ability to do this on your own.

Symbolism: Much of the power of ritual is tied into symbolism. There’s actually a lot of basic magical theory you have to go through and learn in order to understand the power behind symbolism and why it works. It deals a lot with like attracting like, as above so below, thought form theory, and many other things. There’s so much depth to it, it’s far beyond the scope of this article to fully explain it.

But think of this. Plastic has no metaphysical quality. Actually it’s metaphysical quality is that it lacks a metaphysical quality. It doesn’t hold energy at all. Energy tends to pass right through it. It doesn’t taint energy which passes through it. It doesn’t really produce energy. Metaphysically it doesn’t really feel like anything. Why is this?

The common answer is that it is man made and not naturally occurring (the plastic we’re talking about is anyways). That seems like a good idea, except that steel is also man made and doesn’t occur in nature, and steel has metaphysical qualities. In fact it has some very strong and specific metaphysical qualities and we use them quite a bit in magic. Knives and swords are common magical tools that are typically made of steel.

There’s one huge difference between plastic and steel though. Man made plastic was invented about 150 years ago. Steel is so old we don’t know for sure when it was invented, but we’ve found a 4000 year old piece of steel.

For at least four millenia people have been thinking about steel. They’ve been using it, and working with it, and finding uses for it. They’ve been ascribing qualities and attributes to it. They’ve been associating it with things. They’ve written poems and songs about it. They’ve used it as symbolism in books and plays. It’s found its way into mythology and folklore and religions all over the world. This has been going on with plastic for a mere 150 years.

I’m not going to go into a full explanation, but if you take what you know about thought form theory and like attracting like you should start to get a picture of how various magical attributions came into being, and you can probably start to form a picture that shows why something old like steel has certain magical qualities and attributions behind it and something new like plastic doesn’t.

And in ritual symbolism works in the same way. We are able to illicit a spiritual response from a common symbolic act which in turn can be changed into a physical effect.

Showmanship: A lot of people want the show. If you’re doing a spell for someone else’s benefit, they probably want a show. If you’re charging them, they’ll most likely insist on it. In a perfect world people would only be concerned with results. But in our world people want a show.

They want to know you’re doing something. They want it to be something mystical. If you’re charging them, they want to know you’re doing work for the money you gave them. Psionic magic is horrible for this purpose. If someone pays you $50 for a prosperity spell, and you just stand still for a second and then say “done,” they’re going to want their money back. Even if as they’re asking for their money back they notice a hundred dollar bill on the ground, they’ll still want their money back.

Ritual however is something physical they can see. A lot of times even that isn’t enough though. So a lot of ritual is actually there just to look cool or mystical. A lot of it is nothing more than showmanship, usually just added in there for the benefit of an audience. It sometimes also helps with my earlier point of making magic more real.

Tools: Sigils, Pentacles, and Jewelry

This is the fifth and final part of the series dealing with elemental tools. Earth, like water, is a feminine and thus passive elemental. Even worse though Earth doesn’t have an active form (although water does). When I talked about water element tools I talked about how they were rarely used in ritual because they were passive tools. Earth tools get used a bit more often though, and there’s two main reasons for it. First off, and most importantly, they act as a bridge to the physical world. Secondly we can do things to Earth element tools.

What Are the Earth Element Tools

There is some confusion over what constitutes Earth element tools. We know the classic tools are Sword, Wand, Chalice, Lantern (or Lamp) and something else to represent Earth. I’ve noticed a lot of magicians have just stuck something in there so that they have a fifth tool (to represent the fifth element).

Actually every single physical tool you use has an Earth association. Your wand, your sword, your chalice, your lantern, all of these are technically Earth associated tools. In the case of your wand, for instance, it is fire associative, but it is also a physical object and thus has an Earth association.

Some magic is entirely spiritual in nature, but the point of a lot of magic is to somehow affect physical reality. Spells meant to bring you money, to bring love into your life, to help you find a book, and to strike your enemies dead are all meant to ultimately affect the physical world. The point of all this magic is to take something entirely spiritual, like an idea or energy or spirit, and somehow transform that into a physical force. Our tools aid us in that endeavor by acting as a bridge between the spiritual world and the physical world. Your wand represents the element of fire, an element which is a spiritual force. Your wand however is something that is physical (and Earth associative), and so it acts as a conduit to turn this spiritual thing into a physical thing.

Earth element tools are really the exact opposite of Spirit element tools. If you remember the actual spirit element tool isn’t the lantern or the candle, it’s the flame. And that flame, like our tools, acts as a bridge between the spiritual world and the physical world. It’s a bridge that goes the other way though. If we burn a candle, or a piece of paper, or some kind of offering, the point is to take something that is physical and turn it into something purely spiritual. Our other tools however take something that is purely spiritual and give it some sort of physicality.

Rather then go on and on about every type of physical tool imaginable, I’m going to look at three tools which are usually considered Earth element tools and a few different ways they can be used. Namely sigils, pentacles, and jewelry.

Sigils

There are a few different ways to make sigils. You can copy them from a book. You can channel them. You can derive them from magical squares. And you can even create and then empower your own. Peter Carol created a method to do just that for his system of Chaos Magick that is very popular.

All a sigil is is just a symbol drawn on to some sort of physical object (like a piece of paper). Small children scribble on paper all the time. These scribbles rarely bring them great wealth or open the gates to hell or whatever else people usually do with magic. So what makes the symbols that make a sigil powerful?

The symbols of a sigil (however they’re made, so long as they are made correctly) connect to something. This may be an energy, or spirit, or idea, or place, or magician. It can really be anything. But the whole point of the sigil is that it forms a connection between something and that piece of paper, and quite possibly anyone who works with or even looks at the symbol on that piece of paper.

Suppose you have a spirit you’ve evoked. You want this spirit to do something for you, like bring you treasure or make somebody fall in love with you, it really doesn’t matter what. Some spirits may be very powerful. They may be powerful enough to manifest on their own and do your bidding or whatever. Other spirits though aren’t going to be that powerful. These spirits are entirely spiritual beings, and how the hell is a spiritual being going to drag treasure to your house? It’s like a ghost that moves around and you can see and even talk to, but it isn’t going to be able to pick stuff up and throw it at you.

So you take a symbol that this spirit is somehow connected to and write it on a piece of paper. You’ve now given the spirit a connection to that piece of paper. It can now utilize that piece of paper as a tool, and utilize some of that paper’s qualities, mainly that the piece of paper physically exists in this world and is allowed to physically effect this world. Now the spirit is capable of acting in this world.

Of course a piece of paper is a weak and flimsy thing. Paper isn’t well known for being forceful or powerful. Just like some spirits can manifest on their own some can do an awful lot with just a piece of paper. Others not so much. You could of course put your sigil on to other things though, like for instance you can carve a sigil into wood, or a metal like iron, or even into gold. And in any of these cases the spirit will be able to make use of the qualities of whatever you carve its symbol into. And wood and iron and gold all have a much greater physical mass, are much more durable, and much more powerful than paper.

Pentacles

I’m only including this one to clear up some confusion. A pentacle is not the same thing as a pentagram. These are two different words and, as such, they mean two different things. Some of the confusion stems from the fact that on several popular tarots (including the Rider-Waite) the pentacles depicted on the cards are of pentagrams.

A pentacle refers to a talisman of some sort. It is basically something with a symbol on it, like a piece of paper or a piece of metal. It sounds a lot like what I just said a sigil was. The main difference is that technically sigil refers to the symbol itself, where as pentacle refers to the entirety of the tool, both the symbol and the material it is drawn on. And yes sometimes that symbol may be a pentagram, but that isn’t always (or even mostly) the case.

Jewelry

I think we all know what jewelry is. It’s rings, necklaces, bracelets, talismans, amulets, tiaras, piercings, and just about anything else made of metal or a gemstone that can be worn on your person. We aren’t counting plastic jewelry, mainly due to the limited metaphysical properties of plastic as talked about in a previous article. That article also discusses the properties of metal and gemstones, which we’ll be making use of with magic jewelry.

When making magical jewelry we have four basic methods of enchanting jewelry.

1. Add specific energy to the piece – This is the most basic type of jewelry enchantment. Of course jewelry enchanted this way can be used as a simple battery or reserve of energy. It can also be used as a very simple type of spell. Basically the jewelry will push off large amounts of a specific energy into the surrounding area, and this energy will in turn have some effect on people in the surrounding area. It’s the same sort of an idea as a projection. A lot of the glamour rings (rings that make people more attracted to you/fall in love with you) I’ve seen, well the ones that aren’t entirely scams, use this type of magic to work.

2. Place a spell in the piece – This method is a bit more complicated and a bit more fancy, but far more versatile. To do this we find a spell or ritual, any spell or ritual at all. We then break down its physical components so it is entirely psionic. And lastly we place it into the object with the intent that the object will cast the spell on its own. There are a few different ways to go about doing this. The method that has always seemed easiest to me is to actually perform the entire spell and while doing this to pull the energy and ritual aspects from each part as the spell is being performed and place it into the object. Doing this means the spell you’re casting won’t do anything at all (because you yanked everything into the object), but then all of those acts and energies will be placed in the object and can be activated just by charging the object.

3. Connecting the object to a spirit – Another method to enchant an object is to connect the object to a particular spirit. This can be a demon, a ghost, an angel, whatever. Likewise the spirit may live inside or even be trapped inside the object. Alternatively the object may simply connect to a particular spirit that resides outside the object (in this case the object is sort of like a telephone that calls the spirit). In this case any energy put into the object is meant only to either empower the spirit or make a connection with the spirit. Whatever the object is meant to do is actually done by the spirit which resides in the object.

4. Making the object sentient – Finally you can make an object sentient. This is a lot like connecting it to a spirit. The difference is that instead of taking an already existing spirit and connecting it to the object, we make a new spirit which is the object. In other words we are making this object intelligent and giving it a soul.

Each of these four methods has various advantages and disadvantages. Method #1 is by far the easiest method, but it is also very limited and wastes a lot of energy. Method #2 is a bit more complicated but at the same time a lot more versatile in what it can do. Method #3 might not even require an energy source and you may be working with a very powerful spirit, but on the downside you need to find a willing outside spirit to connect into the jewelry and you also have to deal with that spirit. Method #4 requires you to know specific skills (how to make sentient objects), but eliminates the need to find an outside spirit and allows you to design the intelligence of the object to specifically fit you needs. On the downside the power of the object will be somewhat limited by your own power (unlike when using an outside spirit) and you will still have to deal with a sentient being (granted one you specifically designed though.

Sources of Energy

However you decide to make your jewelry you’ll still have to have an energy source for it. In order for the object to do anything it needs to expend energy, and that energy has to come from somewhere. Given time even an inanimate object will replenish the energy it expends. Gemstones are actually really good at replenishing energy, but this is still a slow process. Also these inanimate objects tend to naturally hold very small amounts of energy, and when they replenish themselves they will only replenish this very small amount. Usually that won’t be enough to do the sort of magic you want. There are several different ways to empower an enchanted object.

1. Take it from the wearer – This is by far the easiest and most common method. A piece of jewelry is designed so that it will draw energy off the person wearing it. There are of course several disadvantages to this method. First off you have to expend energy to use the object. Depending on how much energy the object needs it may exhaust you. And how effective the object is is going to be directly tied into how powerful the person wearing it is. A piece of jewelry that may work great for an adept may completely drain an inexperienced magician without having any effect.

2. Draw it from an infinite source – Basically the object is going to be tied into some source of infinite or near infinite energy. Usually an object like this is tied into a particular god who empowers it. The object may also be tied into a very powerful spirit. Another common thing to tie these objects into is the Earth. Alternatively a specific infinite place may be used, such as tying the object to one of the Sepiroth. The main disadvantage of this method is that the energy is going to be specific to what it’s being drawn off of, and that you’re going to need permission to take the energy from a god or spirit.

3. Tie the object into an energy cycle – You can also tie the object into a cycle or frequent occurrence and creates large amounts of excess energy in its wake. The most common cycle to tie an object into is the cycle of the moon. Once a month, when the cycle completes, the object will be completely charged. I personally like tying objects into lightning storms (there is a lot of excess energy floating around from the lightning during these storms). So every time a lightning storm happens these objects recharge. The main disadvantage of this method is that you can’t instantly recharge your objects and you may have to wait for some particular event to occur in order to use them.

4. Steal energy from the surrounding area – This type of object essentially operates like a psionic vampire. It looks around the area for anything besides the wearer that may have energy and drains it so that it can operate. The disadvantage to this method is that it is immoral and just as unethical as being a psionic vampire, and most magicians will regard this as a direct attack.

5. Receive energy from a sentient source – Finally you can get energy from a sentient source. This means that you either made the object sentient or you tied a spirit into the object. Both a spirit and a sentient object are going to have souls and they are going to naturally replenish energy. The sentient object or spirit may be powerful enough to completely empower the object.