I explore the mechanics behind cursing and how cursing works as well as what you need to consider and understand about cursing as it relates to who you are and the impact it can have on you.
How to step into your power
I’m continuing to read Becoming a Supple Leopard (affiliate link) and try out the exercises in it. One of the key points the author emphasizes is how the torsion of your movements directs the overall experience. I relate this to my study of qi gong, which focuses on both the physical and energetic movement of the body. I’ve been combining what I’ve learned with the aforementioned book with my qi studies and I’m finding that this is subtly changing the way I stand and move, and in turn its allowing me to access more subtle experiences of qi.
In martial arts and qi gong, the subtle nuances become very important. The way you move shapes the experience of the qi as it flows through your body. The more you progress, the more you are shaped by the experience of the movement, as well as your understanding of that movement. The understanding isn’t an intellectual exercise. It a felt experience that embodies the depth of your work as you engage in it.
The cultivation of qi occurs through developing a deeper relationship with your body. For example, over the last few months I’ve been working on my posture. I’ve noticed that as I continue this work, my confidence has increased because of the way I hold myself in my stance and presence. I am getting to know my body through the repetition of exercising, the stretching I do each morning and evening and through the graceful strength of the movements.
Energy work is often depicted as something separate from the body, but the most effective energy work is a fusion of the body with the spirit and the qi. I am not just moving the physical body, but every other aspect of my being. And I am also being moved by the world around me, because I exist in a collaborative relationship with it, and this is made apparent by the physical and spiritual experiences I have through this work.
We step into our power when we embrace the natural state of being that looks beyond the artificial categorizations people are so fond of using to understand the world intellectually. We are more than the intellect and when we embody and embrace this, it enables us to discover a relationship with the world that draws on the experiential work that occurs through such activities as martial arts and qi gong.
My approach to magic has been changing a lot over the last few years. I’ve steadily been integrating a more embodied approach to my work as I feel it’s essential to connecting with the more subtle aspects of reality manifestation. Stepping into your power is a recognition of how potent you are, as yourself, in this work you engage in. Each movement presents a way to get outside of your head and discover the rooted relationship that awaits in the practice of movement.
How to Re-Write and Re-wire Memories
Awhile back I went to a restaurant and took myself on a dinner date. I don't normally eat out alone, but I wanted to re-write and re-wire a memory and I've found that sometimes the best way to do that is to revisit a site and make a new memory that overwrites the old memory.
But what if we can't do that? What if we're too far away or if the memory is simply too triggering?
We may still want to change the memory, but we may need to take a magical approach to doing that work that liberates us from the trauma and tyranny of the past, while also enabling us to transform our present and presence.
I like to take two different approaches to this kind of magical work.
1. Use pathworking to rewrite the memory and create a new story and narrative
I have used pathworking to rewrite traumatic memories. In the book Magical Imagination by Nick Farrell (Affiliate link), there's an excellent script you can use where you create this idyllic garden in your mind.
The garden seems really peaceful, but there's a rotting tree in it and that tree represents the memories you need to work through. You go into the tree and you find a corridor of doors and each door leads to a memory.
You go into the memory but you have complete control of that memory. You can change it anyway you want and rewrite the memory and experience however you please.
You can make different choices and cause different actions to happen and transform the way the memory unfolds. It's magical and it can help you change the deep patterns in your life.
2. Transform the memories with the memory box.
You can also use a magical tool like a memory box. A memory box is a tool where you store memories in order to transmute them into energy in your life. It's similar to that magical tool in the Harry Potter fiction...the pensieve.
I created my first memory box many years ago and I've used it for a variety of space/time magical workings, but one of the workings I do is I store memories in it, and convert them into energy for transforming my life.
The traumatic memories become fuel for empowerment. By removing them from my active and unconscious memory and storing them somewhere else, I let them go from my life and this frees me from the trauma I would otherwise be holding onto and allowing to define me in my life in a way that empowers and frees me from the past so I can embrace the present.
3. And sometimes you just need to do a cathartic magical working...
I said I was only going to share two ideas, but I thought about it and sometimes what you need to do is a cathartic magical working where you release the emotions, thoughts and triggers of the memories.
In the summer of 2022 I hiked Mt. Pisgah. I took with me three letters I had written. Two of them were written to an ex. One was a letter where I just vented over my hurt feelings and another was a gratitude letter. The third letter was for me and in it I wrote about the life I wanted to create for myself. It was an act of magical writing designed to help me create a new narrative for my life.
I hiked all day and I found three different spots. At each I did a ritual where I buried a letter and did a ritual of release where I cut the ties that bound us, and in the process began healing from the traumatic experiences and memories I was feeling. By the end of the day I was physically and emotionally exhausted, but I also feel cleansed and this began a process of healing that is allowing me to radically transform my life.
Our memories don't need to define us. We can turn them into tools, we can heal them and we can let them go and live our best lives.
Rewriting the narrative of your life through social media
I find social media to be a fascinating tool, as a writer, because of how it has become a journaling tool for people. Each day I’ll read updates where people share fascinating notes about their lives, as well as their various interests. Something which has always stood out to me about social media is that it’s a space where people are rewriting the narratives of their lives through the content they generate and the live interactions they have with other people.
One of the ways that I experiment with social media as a magical practice involves creating a distinct narrative of my life that I want to manifest. I consider social media to be a hypersigil, but instead of creating a character to represent myself, I simply use the medium of social media as a representation of my life as it is happening. The writing and reading of events can create a compelling narrative the speaks to the reality of the person doing the writing, as well as those doing the reading.
As a a writer I become the reader of my life, both in terms of responding to other people’s comments on what I’ve shared but also reviewing the memories of my experiences that are on the social media sites. We are co-creating an interactive dialogue that shapes the narrative between us in written and sometimes graphical form.
From a magical perspective the approach I take is that social media allows me to create a narrative of my life fused with a specific intent that is embedded in the writing. What I choose to write and share is reflective of that intent. One consideration is that the intent is filtered because social media and writing in general is filtered by the subjective biases we bring, but that’s also a strength from a magical perspective, because that subjective bias becomes a magical tool for the writing. Your subjective bias has all the personal attachments connected with it and that fuels the writing and crafts the experience of the narrative.
In my upcoming class the Practical Magic of Writing, we’re exploring how to create a narrative of your life, using hypersigils. Social media can be one of the mediums you use for this kind of magical work, especially when you integrate other elements such as pictures and videos. I have used Facebook to create manufactured memories and on Instagram I’ve been developing some reels and videos as well as stories told through pictures. The stories I tell become part of the magic of my life and shape the manifestation of that life into reality.
How to establish spiritual presence through Somatic posture work.
I’m reading Becoming a Supple Leopard by Kelly Starret and Glen Cordoza (affiliate link) in this book the author explores the fundamental movements needed to maintain good posture while moving. It brings up a relevant point that posture isn’t a static experience or condition, but rather something which is ongoing and ought to be maintained while moving. How does that translate into practical terms?
If I am exercising or lifting an object, I should do my best to maintain good posture. I want to pay attention to keeping my back straight and in a neutral position in order to optimize the performance of my body, while maintaining my health. I’ve been doing this very activity more mindfully as a result of my martial arts studies, but one aspect I think is worth considering is also the psychological and spiritual aspect of paying attention to posture.
When I sit or stand, in the past I have had the tendency to slouch. I never really thought about it until it was pointed out to me, but when I started paying attention I noticed not only how I felt physically but also how I felt emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Focusing on my posture altered my experience. I began to feel more confidence in myself as well as more connected to both my internal qi and the qi around me. What this illustrated for me was the importance of doing posture work to cultivate states of experience which elevate my identity and my interactions.
I also have noticed this same effect when I focus on my posture as I move. My movements are more confident and focused when I pay attention to and integrate good posture into the movement. Initially as I’ve done this work, I’ve had to really focus on getting my posture right, but as my consciousness integrates good posture into my stance and movements it becomes more and more of a natural part of my being and expression. The result is more confidence but also a deepening of my spiritual power and presence.
Why would good posture make a difference in one’s spiritual presence?
Good posture allows us to align our body physically and physiologically within ourselves but also our environment. On the emotional level it allows us to expand our presence and this translates over to the energetic and spiritual level. When I maintain good posture I move and show up with confidence and presence. This occurs on multiple levels.
What all this work with posture is demonstrating is that something we take for granted, such as posture, can play an important role on multiple levels of our being. Making the effort to work on your posture can have many benefits, provided you are willing to consistently do the work to change and then maintain correct posture in all situations.
Book Reviews of 2023
Book Review: Celebrating the Male Mysteries by RJ Stewart (affiliate link)
In Celebrating the Male Mysteries, RJ Stewart shares the importance of exploring the masculine mysteries and presents a healthy vision of what such mysteries can look like as well as how they can interface into mystery traditions in general. Practical exercises and theory are presented as well as specific visualizations that men can use for sacromagical work. I recommend reading through the book once and then going back through and doing the exercises. This book can be an excellent companion to other men’s work books and offers another valuable resource for creating healthy masculinity and relationships.
Book Review: Larva: the Book of Transformation by S. Connolly (Affiliate link)
This is a collection of spells with well-written instructions and component lists that you can easily perform without having to do a ton of work to get the materials together. There are a variety of spells for different purposes so you could easily be working with the content of this book for a variety of situations.
Book Review: Saturn in Transit by Erin Sullivan (affiliate link)
I bought this book on the recommendation of a friend and I’m glad I did because it provided some excellent insights into Saturn in transit and how Saturn as an astrological influence works. It also helped me plan some of my planetary magic in further depth so that I could use Saturnian influences more effectively. I highly recommend this book if you want to understand the astrological and magical potential of Saturn.
Book Review: Meditations on the Death Daemonic by J. C. Cesari (Affiliate link)
This is an interesting book that explores the concept of death in relationship to death as it pertains to loss in a variety of forms, including the loss of life, but also the loss of a job, relationship or other aspects we may not typically associate with death. The author has the reader go through some journaling exercises to explore their relationship with death and then presents a dictionary of spirits a person can work with. What I wish had also been included was an in-depth exploration of how a person might work with the spirits around death as it relates to the topics that the author focuses on in the book. It’s a good start on that exploration, but the book could be developed further.
Book Review: Dark Moon Mysteries by Timothy Roderick (Affiliate link)
If you want to work with the new/dark moon, this is an excellent resource to help you do that work. I used the various exercises in this book to help me do some deep shadow work as well as doing some releasing around various matters in my life. I highly recommend this book.
Book Review: The Male Mysteries by Nikki Dorakis (affiliate link)
In this book the author shares rites and rituals that can be used as coming of age or initiations for men’s mysteries in a Pagan context. This is a fascinating book which can really help men both in terms of using what’s in the book, but also designing their own male mysteries.
Book Review: Howlings from the Pit (affiliate link) by Joseph Lisiewski
In this series of essays the author makes some cantankerous arguments as to why grimoire magic works and why other systems of magic don’t work when it comes to spirit work. He shares some interesting perspectives, but I’m not convinced that his system of spirit work is superior to others, especially because it can be possible to get similar results without taking coercive methods for spirit work. The author’s own limitations also show in the theories he espouses, and demonstrate how subjective some of his arguments are, but the book is thought provoking and will challenge you to be more rigorous.
Book Review: Mating in Captivity (affiliate link) by Esther Perel
This is a really thought and emotion provoking book about sexuality in relationship. Reading it brought up a lot for me, as I sorted through some baggage around my sexual history, but it also provided some useful insights about relationships, the erotic and sexuality and what it can take to maintain the sexual components of a romantic relationship. It also brings up the very important point of not taking sex or anything else in the relationship for granted.
Book Review: Swamplands of the Soul (Affiliate link) by James Hollis
In this book the author explores how to deal with the inevitable realities of moments in our lives when we feel depression, sadness, loss, betrayal and other emotions. He shares that rather than trying to always be happy we should strive for meaning and provides some useful perspectives via Jungian psychology on how a person might do this. It’s another excellent book by this author.
Book Review: The Book of Pluto by Steven Forrest (Affiliate link)
Reading this book peeled back another layer of astrology in general, as well as helping me understand Pluto’s role in astrology. It helped me understand and fill in some additional information about astrology. I feel like my overall knowledge of astrology grew as a result of reading this book.
Book Review: Hex Twisting by Diana Rajchel (affiliate link)
This is a comprehensive spell compendium for counteracting hexes and curses that someone may be directing toward you. The author also shares methods for diagnosing whether you are experiencing a curse as well as how to purify and cleanse yourself. It’s both practical self care and defense and the author does a thorough job of providing resources for anyone who may need them.
How to Build a Relationship with your Land
You can build a collaborative relationship with your land. I discuss how to build that relationship and share what it can look like, especially as you get to know the land and develop a communication and dialogue with the spirits that live on the land.
How we shape and are shaped by spirits
Picture copyright Joanna Brook 2024
The other day I visited some land that a friend is working on. He’d asked Joanna and I if we could stop by and share our impressions of the land with him. It ended up being a very moving experience. We walked the land and I immediately felt the spirit of the area reach out and connect with me. We walked up a hill and I felt drawn to a bright spot that was lit by incandescent presence. The sun shone through the canopy of trees to this spot, which was a convergence of ley lines, creating a well of power, the Earthlight melding with the cosmic breath of the Sun. We continued walking the land and it spoke to all of us in whatever way was best suited for each of us.
One of the impressions I got from the land is that it didn’t like the fences that had been put in place to mark the human boundaries of the land. It felt like those fences were cutting into its essence and its overall sense of unity. It was like having a splinter in the skin, causing a consistent ache that was annoying and didn’t feel right. It wanted the splinter to be removed because it was taking away from what it really was. The fences were shaping its identity in a way it didn’t want and that didn’t feel right. The fences were an imposition put on the land because of a need to mark a territory. The problem with that need is that it prioritized human concerns over the land and in the process was fracturing the identity of the land.
After we left, I got to thinking about the spirit of that land and I wondered how it might have felt different as an identity and presence without those fences or without all the other changes humans had brought to the land. I wondered if it would have felt larger and encompassed a bigger, more diverse area. I began thinking about how the identity of the land may have changed over time. I thought of a yew tree grove on a different farm I had visited and wondered if at one time that yew tree grove had been part of a larger identity of the land that stretched over the area and then become its own distinct identity because of how the land had been shaped by the human need to create borders and declare ownership of the land.
In my book Walking With Nature Spirits, I discuss how nature spirits aren’t really concerned with helping people get results. What they want from us, if anything, is to recognize that we are part of the land. The actions we take with the land shape its identity, but we are also shaped by the land we live on and co-exist with. A good example of that connection is the story our host shared with us when we visited him on the land he was working on. The people who had previously occupied that land had planned on building a weed farm there. They spent two years, but didn’t get much accomplished. The spirit of that land resisted them. We saw this with all the tools and structures that were abandoned. In one sense, the place felt like a ghost town and I surmised that the land had subtly influenced the previous people to leave because it didn’t want them there.
At our home, Joanna and I are working with the spirit of the land we live on. It’s a distinct spirit that is separate from the land around it. It is separated by fences, roads, and it is much quieter than the spirit I encountered on the farm we visited. Yet even though it is quieter, it is also still present with us and has its own sense of being that makes itself known to us. When I walk in my yard, practice Kung Fu or do work on the garden, I can feel the spirit of the land interacting with me, shaping me, even as I shape it. The land wants to work with me because of the respect and collaborative relationship I’ve developed with it.
I’ve worked with the life on that land. In some cases I’ve worked to pare back the life, such as when I get took all the English Ivy off the fences, and in other cases I’ve planted seeds and plants in the land to help create the sacred space that we live in. All of that work is a cooperative process. I’m dialoguing with the land, listening to the spirit make itself known to me so that I can work with it in a way that opens me to being shaped by it as well. When we work with the land in this way, it teaches us that we are part of it and that our identities are shaped by the interaction with the land, even as we shape the identity of the land.
We name the land. For example, Joanna and I have named our home the together home. It’s a name that has personal meaning to us, but it also creates an identity for the home. We could name the land the together land and that too would shape the identity of the land, but also ourselves. The irony is that while naming provides identity, it also provides differentiation and separation. At one time the land was simply the land and then someone came along and named the land. Maybe they name it after someone or maybe they named it for a particular aspect of the land that they noticed. That act of naming shaped the identity of the land, gave it a bit more form in human consciousness and a way to interact with us directly, but it also separated that named part of the land from the rest of the land. We have done this again and again and it creates distinct presences. This is neither good nor bad. It simply is a reality of how we interact with the world and with each other.
Names have power and distinction. They confer presence and awareness. The benefit of names with spirit work is they provide us a way to conceptualize and approach spirits. The same applies to the land. We live in something so vast and yet we have brought it down to a level that we can make sense of, by naming parts of it and giving those parts their own identities. It is good to keep this in mind as we interact with the land…and to ask ourselves if its possible to meet the land on its terms and level of being, and what that might teach us as a result.
Why Subjectivity is important in magic
In Holy Daimon by Frater Acher (affiliate link) the author makes an insightful point when he notes the following, “While objectivity is certainly necessary in, for instance, medicine and some fields of physics, it causes real problems when it is applied to all modes of human enquiry.” I agree with his point about objectivity because objectivity is often held up as a holy grail for all methods of inquiry to aspire to, but this isn’t realistic, because not all methods of inquiry can be rooted in objective study. Magic is one such method of inquiry, and with magic it is better suited to ask the questions, “Does it work?” or “Am I getting results?” then to focus on finding objective proof of magic.
These are subjective questions and subjectivity is often treated as less than reliable because it becomes more personal, and the question of proof arises. Can you prove that X helped really happened because of Y? is a question that may naturally arise from a skeptical person. My answer has always been to look at the overall consistency of magic in my life and note through observation whether there are repeatable patterns. Yet, there are also situations where I do magic for a specific situation or to have a specific experience and I may never need to do that magical working again. Even then, what I look to is the overall efficacy of the magical work.
Has this work changed my life? Am I moving in a direction that I want to go toward? Am I having meaningful, life changing experiences? These are the questions I am interested in answering, as well as the inevitable question, Can I experiment with this idea and this process and get a result. I’m less interested in proving that magic is objectively real. I think the evidence for that question is already present by the fact that magic, in one form or another, continues to be a prevalent part of humanity.
Subjectivity is important in magic because it allows us to make room to explore the intersection between out human consciousness and the liminal aspects of reality that don’t fit neatly into conveniently labeled categories that are thrust upon us by people craving certainty, instead of embracing the uncertainty that is life. Subjectivity allows us to be present with the unknown and consider alternate ways of knowing that can bring as much value to us as objectivity can.
A person on the magical path ought to recognize as well that the path IS highly personal. None of us will walk exactly the same path, nor do we need to. Subjectivity helps us recognize this reality of magic and embrace it. My experience isn’t the same as yours and it doesn’t need to be. At the same time, it IS good to apply some rigor to the work. Making fantastical claims without backing those claims up just makes the work harder for all of us, but if you can apply some rigor to your experiences you’ll find consistent patterns in your work that speaks to the questions I mentioned above. Embrace your subjective experience and also track it!
What is the Magic of the New Year?
The transition from one calendar year to another has become a moment of magic. I explore why the arbitrary nature of such moments is powerful magic in and of itself. I also discuss how to use the liminal aspects of this transition to help you with your own magical work.
Somatic dissolving through posture and movement
I recently picked up the book Become as Supple as a Leopard, which is fascinating book about posture. I’ve picked it up because I’m currently doing a lot of work with my posture in my Kung Fu and Qi Gong studies. I’m paying particular attention to how straight I stand and how I position my back when I am lifting something or otherwise bending over. This is a crucial detail that can effect your physical health and your overall well being.
I’m also continuing to focus on breathing, specifically doing a continuous in and out breath during qi gong, where I breathe in as I move my arms up and breathe out as I move my arms down. While doing this breathing I focus on my lungs and diaphragm, expanding my awareness to fully use the capacity of my organs and in the process dissolve blockages.
The blockages are dissolved by using your awareness. You become aware of the blockage and you place your awareness on it, so that the blockage is gradually dissolved. Your awareness is like a waterfall flowing around the blockage, making it softer and softer until it releases on all levels of your being. While you do this releasing work you can continue doing some type of qi gong practice. The practice I typically do is either Cloud Hands, Heaven and Earth or Gods Playing in the Clouds. Each of these practices brings you into somatic alignment with your body consciousness.
I also like to do this work with standing meditation. When you stand its important to focus your awareness on the alignment of your body with your posture. Your feet should be aligned with each other like two wheels of a car or a train and facing forward. You want arms to hang at your sides comfortable. You want to slightly squat with your hips and pelvic area so that you are “seated” in your posture. Then focus on breathing, drawing the breath in and releasing it out. As you breathe, scan your body with your awareness, starting at the top of your head and slowly going down your body. Keep in mind that the work your doing is a gradual release and it may feel like you are releasing a layer at a time.
Each release of a layer of a blockage also releases with it emotional and mental stresses that are embedded in the body. The human body retains memories of traumatic events and experiences and the best way to release those memories is through this kind of release work. You may not be consciously aware of how embedded the trauma is, but by doing this release work you can gradually loosen it and then dissolve it altogether.
You can do this work through both standing meditation and moving practices. The key is to focus on your breath and specifically on using your breath with standing and movement to help you go deeper and deeper into your body as you work to release the physical, emotional and mental blockages. Eventually you’ll reach a state of great calm and emptiness and you can fully relax into that experience allowing it to lead you to even deeper states of awareness and transcendence.
The Daimonic as the voice of the Divine
I’ve lately been reading a fascinating book on Daimonic spirits. I share what I’m learning and some ideas it brings up around the nature of the divine and how working with these spirits can help us connect to the divine nature within ourselves.
Developing your Energy through Posture and Qi
How to cultivate your internal energy through standing meditation and qi practices. The benefit of this work can be felt through the somatic practices you embrace and apply to your life. I share how I’ve applied this work to my own practices.
Psychology and Religion and their role in Spirit Work
I recently finished reading Joseph Lisiewski’s Howlings from the Pit (Affiliate link), which is a collection of essays about grimoire magic and of curse his particular argument as to why you have to do spirit work with daemons in a specific way. I don’t agree with Lisieswki’s approach and I’ve gotten efficacious results through my own system of spirit work, but I do think he makes some interesting points that are worth considering, both in regards to spirit work and magical work in general.
Point 1: You have to honor the original religious/spiritual belief system you were raised with - Lisiewski makes the argument that if you were raised in a different religious/spiritual system than the current religfious/spiritual system you are in, and you want to do spirit work, you have to honor original religious/spiritual system at least once or twice a year. I disagree with the author on this limited belief and think it speaks more to his religious/spiritual issues than being an actual and effective axiom.
I was raised episcopalian and was a born again Christian for a time and I never found that I needed to go to a sermon or make some kind of offering at a church in order to do effective spirit work. When a person makes a rule or axiom around any magical work, we ought to carefully consider the subjective nature of such rules. What works for one person may not work for another and may not even be relevant.
Point 2: If you put your power in magical tools this takes away from the power you bring to rituals. - This is an interesting argument that I find myself agreeing with in some ways. Lisiewski is specifically referring to the creation of tools for the Golden Dawn rituals and how part of that process involves embedding your personal energy within those tools, which ends up taking away from the efficacy of your work with other magical systems.
I do think its possible to invest a lot of yourself into a given magical tool, which is one reason I recommend not relying on any given magical tool too much. A magical tool is meant to be an aid and representation of something you are working with. It can help you access certain frames of mind and being, but it should never be something you rely upon so much that you can’t do anything without it.
Point 3: If you don’t do the magical working the right way, you can suffer adverse effects (aka his slingshot method). I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to do magic, but you can definitely tell if a given process or methodology is working by the results that are being generated with that process. Keeping careful track of the results, consequences, and adverse effects that come with magical work is a good idea because it helps you recognize what is working or what can be improved upon.
Sometimes you will experience adverse effects with magical work. These may show up as synchronicities indicating the confluence of possibilities lining up to manifest the result or spiritual forces showing up to help or hinder the work involved. The key is not read too much into anything, and continue doing the work until you’ve finished the operation.
Point 4: Your psychological, spiritual, ideological values play a role in your magical work. This point is a bit similar to point 1, but also distinct. What we believe and think about ourselves, other people, and the world around us plays a role in the magical work we do. It’s important to acknowledge the internal reality and the role it plays in our magical work. In my own experience the majority of the time a magical working doesn’t work is because of the internal reality of a person and what is out of alignment with that internal reality and the desired result the person is going for.
Point 5: You have to do specific activities at specific times with specific items. Ironically, one of the points the author made in contradiction to point 2 was that you need to use certain items at certain times in order to get results. I won’t argue that a given system of magic may speak to specific necessities around magical tools, times, etc., but what I find personally powerful about magic is that you can come up with your own systems and processes and get results that are consistent and powerful. You can also do this with a pre-existing system, but you do operate within the constraints of that system. Either way can work, but its important to figure out what works for you. The beauty of magic is that it provides a versatility that can be explored and experimented with, provided we’re willing to question the underlying narrative that magic has to be done a specific way in order to be effective.
How to Work with Qi when Wintering
I discuss how to work with qi when wintering. I share why working with the element of water can be very helpful and allow you to restore and recover your energy when doing qi work.
The form and the essence of magical work
I was recently reading Howlings from the Pit by Joseph Lisiewski and I was struck by something he wrote in regards to ceremonial magicians creating magical tools that took away from the actual experience and success of magic they worked. What struck me is that the magicians were giving up the essence in favor of the form, when in fact they ought to take the opposite approach and give up the form to understand and work with the essence.
Being the magical nerd that I am also made me think of a scene in God of War Ragnarok where Brok the Dwarf tells Kratos that to create the form you have to find the essence. The essence is the key to the form. The form doesn’t exist without the essence. It made me consider Lisiewski’s perspective from another angle: How much of the essence do we give to the form, which in turn causes the form to have the power, presence, magick, etc that would otherwise stay with the essence?
In my own magical work, I’ve typically taken a minimalistic approach to my magic and spirit work operations. I have sometimes added some effects because I recognized that those effects would enhance the overall work, but even with the inclusion of those effects the question I always ask is: Does this help me connect with the magic/spirit more effectively? This is the question that any magician ought to ask themselves in order to best understand how magic can work.
What helps me get to the essence of the work? Is the form a distraction or does it actually help me truly connect with what I want to work with? These are additional questions that are useful to ask. I personally would never take the approach that Lisiewski takes, which is grimoire based because I find that form distracts from the essence. My form, developed and personalized to help me with both magical and spiritual work allows me to connect with the essence of the work I am doing…but Lisieswki would have similar issues, in no small part because of his adherence to his own system of magic and the limitations he operates in.
A given system of magic has its specific rules and limitations. If we recognize this we can see past the form to the essence and focus on working with the essence to help us achieve the ideal form we planned for. We naturally want to attend to the details of a magical working but part of attending to those details is taking the time to understand how the form magic takes actually allows us to connect with the essence and what that means as a result of the work we do.
How to use minimalism in your magical practice
One of the yearly practices that I do is around this time of the year, when the winter season sets in. The longer dark nights and the coldness of the season creates a natural sense of introspective awareness that simultaneously calls for some minimalism in spiritual practice. Recently my magical mate and I followed through on this sense of introspective awareness by creating a wintering altar, where we took many of our ritual and magical items and “retired” them for the season.
Doing this activity gives those ritual and magical items a rest, and it also gives us a chance to evaluate what is absolutely essential to our spiritual practice. Sometimes, when you do an activity like this, what you are really doing is also creating a specific purpose for whatever you leave out. In the case of the wintering alter, leaving out only the essential ritual and magical items involves picking out what would be used for wintering practices, but you can apply this same understanding to a different type of ritual and find that you would use different ritual items based on the purpose of the magical work.
One of the minimalistic practices that I’m applying with wintering is the use of a candle flame, where I stare into the flame for a time, with no other light in the room and allow my consciousness to appreciate the light of the candle, in relationship to the dark. I then blow out the candle and close my eyes, allowing the after image of the flame to imprint itself on my mind. Eventually even the after image fades to darkness and I contemplate the darkness. I can then start up the process again or leave it as it is.
You can do similar process with sound. Take a bell and ring it. Listen to the sound as it fades. Then listen to the silence. Then ring the bell again and repeat the process. When we create practices around our senses that incorporate this kind of minimalism it can teach us a lot about how to incorporate one of our most potent tools into magical and spiritual work: Our bodies.
A minimalistic approach to magic, for whatever the reason or purpose asks that we get creative about our practice because it calls on us to give away what isn’t absolutely essential to our practice, but to figure that out we have to actually assess our practice and determine what to keep and what to let go (for a time). Yet the essentialist aspect of this work also challenges us to discover how we create an experience with less that nonetheless takes us to more.
Why you don't want to draw on your own energy for magick
I discuss why its not a good idea to draw on your own energy for magick and share what some of the potential issues can be when you draw on your energy too much instead of taking the necessary precautions to draw on other sources. I share a personal example and the consequences of doing this based on my own experience.
How to connect to the Energy of a Season
I share some different processes for connecting with the change of the seasons magically, and discuss how to harness that change to help you in your magical practice. I also discuss what that seasonal magic can look like and how we can work with it in our lives in a way that helps us be in touch with the rhythms of our lives.
The Role of Astrological Cycles in Iterative Magic
Iterative magic is a form of space/time magic which employs the cyclical rhythm of time and space in order to create consistent results. One of the cyclical rhythms that iterative magic draws on are found in the astrological cycles and currents that all of us experience in our lives. In iterative magic, we purposely draw upon these cycles to empower and inform our magical work. Each iteration of a cycle refers to the previous and future cycles. When we understand this we can draw on the past, present, and future cycles of a given cycle to enhance the magical work we are doing.
For example Mercury going retrograde would be an example of an astrological cycle that all of us experience. While this cycle is notorious for bad communication, it can also be treated as an opportunity to apply iterative magic to our lives. We recognize that Mercury is going retrograde and instead of hoping that we’ll somehow avoid miscommunication we do iterative magic to either help us improve our communication skills or apply the mercurian cycle in other ways that are related to its influence. We can also apply this same approach to when Mercury is going direct.
We can actually apply iterative magic to any retrograde/direct cycle for any of the planets. Being able to do this doesn’t even necessarily require that you become well versed in astrology either. It may require working with an astrologer or learning some basic knowledge, but once you have that knowledge you can develop iterative magic workings for specific cycles and use that to help you tap into the deeper energies that are present and utilize them for your magical work.
Another approach I’ve taken to astrological influences is to do iterative magic around sun and moon cycles. The moon cycles every 28 days and sometimes there are eclipses which can also be factored in for this work. The sun has its own cycle which we experience through the progression of a year. Each of these can also be used as examples of astrological cycles we can work with iteratively. For instance you can choose to work with the sun at different times of the year (we see this with the wheel of the year) and have each time of the year reference the next and previous times. The same understanding can be applied to moon cycles.
We don’t need to limit iterative magic to astrological cycles, but they are one of the more obvious examples of this work and can be helpful for understanding how iterative magic works and how it can be applied to ongoing magical practices.