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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Why you don't want to be an archetype
I find it fascinating when a person overly identifies with a role they’ve taken on in their lives or profession. Part of the fascination is based off my pop culture studies, where I’ve noted how the persona in pop culture takes on a life of its own. The person who makes up the base identity of the persona is overshadowed by the persona and the attention and energy directed toward it by the people who are interested in the persona.
However this isn’t the only way that identity can be eclipsed by a persona. Identity can also be eclipsed by taking on an archetypal identity and overly associating with it. While there can be a lot of value in working with a given archetype, because of the patterning that the archetype provides, there can also be a limitation involved when you overly associate your identity with the archetype.
When I apply this awareness to my own life I consider that while I practice magic and write books (among other activities) overly associating with the role of magician or author would be very limiting. There are times to take on those roles because they serve a specific purpose and put me into a specific identity, but inhabiting that identity all the time would prevent me from experiencing the richness of my life.
Consider your own life and the archetypal roles you take on. How do those roles serve you? How do they limit you? Do you want to inhabit that role or is something you can outgrow and let go of?
For a long time I have identified myself as a magical experimenter. It’s been a good role to play, but as I continue to walk my life path, I also think about what other roles I might step into as well as what value might be discovered in the process. I will always experiment with magic, but it’s not the only purpose of my life. When I recognized that I was able to step into other roles and let go of some of the attachment I’ve previously held with the magical experimenter role.
We ought to consider carefully who we become as it relates to the archetypes we connect with. Each archetype has a purpose, but we also have purpose beyond the archetype. Getting curious about the overall purpose of your life and being can be just as empowering as any other role you might take on.
A Couple Factors to Consider in Fueling Magic
Whether you are creating a magical entity, putting together a magical working, or doing some other kind of magical operation, one important aspect of the work you always to consider is how you are fueling your magical working. Today I share why that’s important and help you consider the factors that are involved in such work.
Directions, Correspondences, and Intentions
I explore the relationship between directions, correspondences and intentions and use this exploration to demonstrate a profound aspect of magical practice in relationship to how we call in the spiritual forces in our lives.
The Role of Boundaries in Spirit Communication
When we don’t establish the right kind of container with the proper boundaries, spirit communication and work can become problematic. I discuss the importance of setting clear boundaries in your magical work and share why this can benefit you.
If you want to learn more about my upcoming class Advanced Spirit Communication, go here.
The role of somatic meditation in spirit communication
Somatic meditations can play an important role in spirit communication, helping us to connect with the spirit through the medium of our bodies and in the way the spirits interact with the body. I discuss that this experience can be like and why it can help you improve your communication with spirits
5 common misperceptions about communicating with spirits
One of the questions I see frequently asked by other practitioners is how to test and verify if a spirit is on the up and up as it were with the information it provides. Another question I see asked is whether anyone has ever seen a spirit manifest in physical form. These types of questions are valid ones to ask but what they often indicate to me is that the person is caught up in surface level details and is missing out on the subtleties of spirit communication. This brings me to the topic of this article…
5 Common Misperceptions about Communicating with Spirits
The first misperception that many practitioners have around communicating with spirits is an expectation that spirits will communicate using the verbal language you are used to hearing. Naturally we want spirits to communicate with us in the language that we are used to using every day and some spirits may choose to do that, but more often than not I have found that spirits communicate in much more subtle ways, and through what I would consider to be a transmission of information, which acts as a download. Spoken and written language, in comparison are very limiting.
The second misperception is the expectation that spirits will appear in a physical form that you can see. This is one of those tropes of modern occultism where there’s a perceived value in a spirit manifesting physically even though said manifestation doesn’t accomplish much if anything meaningful. I’ve never had a spirit manifest in a physical form yet I’ve had efficacious workings with the spirits. The need for a physical manifestation is a vanity and ego play in occultism which keeps the practitioner from accomplishing real work with the spirit.
The third misperception is the expectation that spirits have the same types of desires and needs that we have. This is reflective of a tendency to humanize spirits. We do this because we want to ascribe motivations and desires to the spirits that we can understand, but these motivations and desires are out of alignment with the nature of a spirit. A spirit may have desires and needs, but those desires and needs are based in the experience that spirit has, which is significantly different from our everyday experience.
The fourth misperception is a tendency to focus on specific aspects of what a spirit can do or provide without considering the bigger picture. This misperception is rooted around the tendency to focus on specific aspects of a spirit, such as its elemental correspondence or domain of influence, because you want the spirit to do something specific for you. It cherry picks the spirit for what is convenient for you and ignores other aspects that either might be helpful or detrimental…or may cause you to ignore other possible spirits to work with.
The fifth and final misperception is around the understanding of power and potential versus form and manifestation. Spirits don’t have the same material awareness or form that we have, but they have access to more power and through it potential. What they provide is possibility and influence which can be directed to help manifest a result, but we bring something essential to the equation as well. We bring the ability to manifest potential into reality through our material and manifest form. If you want to turn a possibility into reality you necessarily sacrifice power for manifestation.
If you want better communication with spirits, where you get consistent results that transform your life then you’ll want to sign up for the Spirit Communication class, where I’ll share my tried and true techniques for connecting with spirits.