Greetings folks!

So a really cool topic came up out of a long-dead one over at StudioArcanis, and it led to a damned good question being asked. I'm going to share both the question and the reply here, so as to record this for my readers who don't tend to hang out on forums.

The question:
"Wanderer are you suggesting a theory of magick that the older a symbol is and the more that it has been used, then the more efficacious it is?[...]"

-Amind


My answer:
"Sort of, but not quite so directly as that.

In my experience, three things matter when doing magic:
1) How established is that current?
2) How easy is it if for [b]you[/b] to get into that current?
3) Just how potent is that current capable of being?

And they really do matter in that order, for the most part.

Runes are ancient. We don't really know how old, but I suggest that you read Jan Fries' Helrunar, as it would indicate that there are some runic forms that go way, way back. Some of 'em were painted all over the world to boot, and usually that's for an unknown reason. Take what you will from that.


Age is only one factor in establishment of a faith, though. There are plenty of old systems that clearly didn't work all that well, as the cults did not survive. Those that were potent had pieces of themselves adopted by other, newer religions that still kept enough of the old ways to make it work (Sun Worship, anyone?). The fact that Christianity has survived and thrived may well be an indicator of just how robust it is as a religious system, even if its one I don't find particular resonance with.

Establishing a faith/system and keeping it going for thousands of years requires quite a bit of human interaction with said system. Furthermore, one could argue that it would require a fair deal of deific interaction too, so as to keep its tenants from being forgotten. When that happens, "grooves" are formed along human consciousness, and what your ancestors did is often easier for you to do. We can posit this theory because mice have been proven to inherit fear-based responses to stimuli like the smell of cherry blossoms (link).

The more something was done before, the easier it is to do again (theoretically speaking, anyway). This is why the status & establishment of a system matters.

Next up, we've got the point of "well, just how easy is it for you to get into that current?", and that goes along the lines of what I mentioned above. If your ancestors did it and you inherited genes that have those spiritual tendencies of theirs locked away therein, then it should logically be easier for you to get a sense of what they did and do it yourself. Likewise, your practices could well be inherited by your kids, provided you got into those practices before they were born.

If this is indeed true (and it appears to be, per science), then those whose families have practiced magical work for generations are going to have a leg up on others, so long as they follow the same line of study.

Finally, we've got the matter of power. How powerful can that system actually be? We've all heard stories of people levitating, crushing others under the weight of their psychic blows, and so on and so forth. These 'miracles' are said to have occur, but hearsay doesn't matter at this point; what matters is actualization. And whose to say how powerful a system is at the end of the day? That's a matter of crafting theories based on tons of resarch.

And here's the particularly important part about the 3rd piece of this puzzle: the pinnacle only matters if you can attune yourself to the system so effectively that you can actually utilize and channel the current at its full potency. If you can't do that, the glittering peak of power-in-a-system means nada to you.

.....and then you get into points of contention like "does this deity still exist?" and "is this accessible?". Some deities & spirits just won't like you regardless of what you do. Its not "fair", but "fair" is bollocks.

Its also worth noting that new systems can be damned powerful if based enough around old systems. I'm convinced that's why New Avatar Power works so damned well...our ancestors wouldn't have had the time to run around with a special dagger, tiger skin belt, and so on. They would have used the down, dirty, and quick way so as to fire their magics off quickly, without fanfare. Hushed, rapid whispers make more sense over grandiose conjurations if you look to history."


Continuing on, this is a topic I've asked spirits about, researched endlessly, and obsessed over for years and years and years now. Its a curious question to posit, but one with a potentially incredible impact. If we're being honest, doing magical work is about results. Would you agree?

If that is the case & success is your goal, adopting a system most prone to get you results is key. And no, I'm not recommending blindly following someone purely because they have the oldest magical system on the books - that would be idiocy. Instead, I suggest that success should be thy proof a la Crowley.

To that end, constantly tinkering with and trying new-to-you systems would be wise. As would integrating truths you find from different places and things.

We would be foolish to believe that these old systems have survived unmolested, and so piecing them back together and distilling them until we've found the absolute heart of the practice is incredibly important.

That is what I do, day in and day out. It is a passion of mine. Maybe it can become a passion of yours. ;)

Be well,
​SE

I've realized I've been a bit lax in sharing pertinent ideas and practices here, over the past few months, so I thought it time to post a bit.  With that in mind, I've been contemplating & experimenting with the idea of using magical grids, mandalas, and so forth when doing work for quite some time now. The idea first struck me many years ago, and I lazily pursued it at the time, only to have my interest rekindled by Gordon over at Rune Soup when he talked about Sigil Shoaling. This pattern of pursuing the idea, then losing sight of it, then pursuing it again has repeated on and on for many years now, and so I am making a conscious effort to put it into practice once again.

As I do so, I am finding that several things happen. Firstly, the vibrational feel of the working picks up considerably.  Secondly, this causes results to manifest more quickly.  And thirdly, it just feels right; something clicks into place and suddenly the individual workings that felt very much alive to start rapidly develops palpable depth and breadth. The workings begin to dance with each other, develop their own music, and then go on to live as if they're villagers that have shuffled out into the world.

Incidentally, since I started doing this, I now get asked if I'm a musician every other day or so.  I love and adore music, but lack the aptitude to create it outside of the creation of sung or whispered charms and such.

Getting back to it, grids, as I'll call them here, can be crafted and shaped in any number of ways with whatever materials you so choose.  You can use numerology, sacred geometry, aesthetic balance, elemental associations, astrological meanings, tarot cards, playing cards, bones, runes, psephoi, colors, and so on and so forth until you've built up a truly impressive and massive magical grid (how's that for a tongue twister, eh?).

Above is one such grid that I use in my home alongside other workings.  When inclined to do so, I often elect to branch out from what you see above and connect this grid to smaller gridded workings like you see below.

The possibilities, potentialities, and arrangements are pretty much limitless in theory.  In reality, they are limited by space and materials. In my case, I limit the size of the workings to 2 altar tops' worth for the sake of not making too much of a mess. :)

When setting up such a system, its useful to take the intention, available materials, and available space into account.  Don't go above and beyond what you can feasibly control, lest it bite you on the rear end at a later date.

I suggest starting small, first by considering the numerical value you want to utilize.  I am partial to letter-based systems of divination a la psephoi (aka the Greek Alphabet Oracle) and the runic Futharks, planetary, and elemental magic, so I tend to arrange grids around those ideas.

If I were to make a fire-related grid for spiritual illumination, I would utilize the numbers 3 and 7, as they strike me as being active and relatively fiery in nature.  I'd utilize 7 different types of materials, be they sigils (Fire symbols from various books, the tattva for fire, picture of a salamander), oils (Fire From Heaven, Bend Over, Commanding), vegetebilia (Cinquefoil, ash, Blessed Thistle, Devil's Claw) mineralia (obsidian, glass, tempered metal, or fire agate), candles (red, orange, jet blue), charms (against Evil Eye, dragon pendant, all seeing eye), animalia (lawfully and humanely harvested bones, sinew, misc. viscera from salamanders, geckos, fire-bellied toads, coyotes, rattlesnakes, vultures, scorpions, mountain lions), uttered or written prayers, energy work, and so forth. I tend to use whatever is available to me - you may or may not have certain limitations, so use whatever you're comfortable with.

Were I to utilize Lunar magic, I'd do the same thing with the numbers 5 and 8. For Jupiter work, I'd use 4 and 7, and so on and so forth, mixing and matching to my heart's content.

With any luck, this post will have provided you with plenty of ideas for magical workings that you could do in the future.

Enjoy your Saturday, folks!

SE

Greetings, dear readers.

Recently, I had an incident that occurred with a client which prompted this post alongside a slight change to how I do things with clients. In short, this was a situation wherein there were too many hands in the cookie jar because the client in question decided that it was pertinent to hire three or four other workers alongside me, despite our conversations about how it was better to avoid complicating things.  It dawned on me, as this was occurring, that he had little to no idea of why this can be an issue, so I thought I'd talk about it here.

To start us off, think for a moment about working in a  kitchen with others, as that's something we've all done.  What happens when you add another person to the group working on cooking a meal? The room gets slightly more crowded with each addition of a new body.  Even when doing prep work, each person needs between a foot and a foot and a half of elbow room, not counting the counter space, to say nothing of the cook, whose likely wandering around the kitchen.  When you've only got 6 or 7 feet of counter space on each side of the kitchen, with an aisle that's ~3 feet across, that space gets damned crowded.  You've got people running around with knives, spices, meats, veggies, hot pots, boiling water, and Gods know what else; the area quickly becomes a hazardous sight.

Magic's really not all that different.  If your life is the stew and the sorcerer's the chef, its up to the chef to season the stew to provide you with what you ordered (the magical result).  If I am seasoning the stew, I have a pretty good idea of what spices I need to add, and what prep work I need to do. If you start adding other chefs to the mix, soon its going to become an incomprehensible mess, as I don't have the slightest idea what the hell the chef to my right is doing to the stew.  He's probably adding spices I'd never thought of with impunity, totally unaware of the fact that the meat in the stew is intentionally flavored a specific way.

To drop the metaphor and get down to brass tacks, in essence, when there are too many folks doing magical work at one time, the situation can get incredibly complicated.  The fact is that every working I do changes fate ever so slightly...when I'm the only one fiddling around, I can do this with a fair deal of control.  That's no longer the case when you have one other spirit worker doing work concurrently. Adding more to the mix only further complicates the problem.

That being the case, its not an issue if you hired someone to do the work prior to getting me involved, so long as they've already done their work.  Its also not an issue for you to hire someone a few months after I've done the work if the case is not, Heavens forbid, resolved.  But for the love of all that is holy, do not hire someone else while you're having me do the work. It'll likely become a convoluted mess and have really crappy repercussions in your life.

Granted, with that said, there's some flex to this "rule".  The fact is that some magical work is incredibly touchy, and other types are really rather cut and dry, for the most part.  Love work is naturally a pain, and everything's a balancing game, so that's a terrible time to add confusion to the mix.  Uncrossing and blessing work, however, is very direct...its simple, and generally, there's not a heck of a lot of confusion that can be caused.

Just do bear this in mind when you're either doing work for other people or having work done for you, as I'd hate to see your result get dorked up because of impatience or indecisiveness on your part.

Cordially,

SE

Greetings folks.

Over the past few days, I've found myself deep in thought after going about my usual client work, personal practice, and devotional work.

It's occurred to me that spiritual work is often a cosmic game of "Telephone".  "Telephone", for those of you caught unawares, is a childhood game wherein the party at the front of the line comes up with a sentence or phrase, tells it to the person next to them, then the recipient does the same and so on and so forth down the line.

Those of you whom have played the game I speak of know that the sentence or phrases starts out as something as simple as "Johnny's mom is also the doctor" and ends up as "Mom's Johnny is also the proctor" at the final person of the game. So too is this the case with client work, I find.

I am frequently approached by folks who either do not speak English or speak it as a second, third, or fourth language; frequently, they encounter the same troubles shared by their brethren from English-speaking countries - they are unsure how to put their concerns and wants into words which will then be clearly understood by someone like myself.

This brings us to a rather awkward point in a relationship, as its difficult to understand just what it is that we're being asked to do when we miss important contextual clues.  This is doubly true when it comes to interacting with spiritual entities, as not only do they not speak our language, but they also tend to sense our emotions, our sense of purpose or lack thereof, our thoughts, our confusion, and so on.  With this truth being as present as it is, we encounter a new difficulty; not only must we understand the goal of our friend, client, partner, spouse, or ourselves, but we also must be able to communicate those goals and intentions effectively to the spirits we conjure.

Language, being a finicky beast at the best of times, is something we must strive to understand intimately if we are to do this effectively; furthermore, we must also understand the language of the spirits we intend to work with.  Sometimes the language is verbal and literal or it can be written and symbolic or any means and methodology in-between.  Each of us is different in how we best perceive and understand the world around us and the spirits we work with, command, and/or serve are no different.

Not only we must understand how to communicate ourselves effectively, but we also must learn to listen to the people and the world around us.  Perception is the key to greater and deeper understandings, and that starts at home with the ones we love.  We must hear them out first if we wish to understand what the Gods and spirits tell us through speech, song, dreams, movies, games, situations, and so on.

With that said, happy hunting and blessed learning.

SE

Greetings, dear readers.

I had hoped to be posting a bit of interesting, useful information herein, but unfortunately a potential client has derailed that particular train of thought.  The topic of this post is those who ask for advice but then don't listen...otherwise known as "askholes",

If you're going to spend the time to explain your life and circumstances to me, and then ask for my help and advice, have the decency and common sense to listen and take heed.  There's little more irritating than attempting to help someone out when they're not paying attention, as my work as a sorcerer revolves around helping others first and foremost; I'm not simply a mercenary to be bought off, so if something is going to cause you a great deal of pain and frustration in the future, I'm going to tell you this.  I do this intentionally; if you're coming to me in need of assistance, some process in your life is broken and not functioning the way it should/you need it to.  That always requires change.

Just something to consider.

Regards,

SE