courtesy of Pixabay
The majority of my practical magical workings are long term enchantments or entities I’ve created for the purpose of enhancing my quality of life. Now what does that really mean?
I find that when people talk about practical magical workings, they typically speak of one off workings that are used to resolve a short term problem. Magic is performed to get the desired result, the result is achieved, and off the person wanders into their lives until the next crisis comes along that calls for magical work to be done. Magic is done as a reaction, with little thought given toward long term consequences or design. I’ve never found that approach to practical magic to be terribly effective, because the focus is on reacting to a problem, without really examining what causes the problem, or trying to solve the problem long term.
Even solving a problem for the long term is somewhat reactive, because you’re responding to the problem. And its fair to say that there will always be some reaction in a person’s practical magic working, because we’re responding to the events and experiences that come our way, but that doesn’t mean we can’t integrate a more proactive approach to our magical workings.
The other day, I was going through some paintings that I was picking out to showcase in my upcoming book the Magic of Art. As I looked through some of the paintings, I remembered that I created some of them to serve as long term magical workings that could help me enhance my life. I hadn’t looked at them in a while, but the purpose I created them for, the long term proactive working, was still showing up in my life. I had created that art as an interface for the magical work I was doing and empowered it to show up in my life in a specific way. For example, I created a painting for the purposes of helping me connect with and manipulate time lines, which has been helpful in forecasting certain events, as well doing some resequencing of those time lines. I made this painting int a long term working. It was created to permanently enhance my life because of how it would help me work with timelines.
That kind of magical work isn’t typically discussed in most magical books and this is because practical magic is treated as a short term response to resolve a problem, instead of a long term solution that allows you to enhance your life. But such an approach to practical magic is short sighted and rarely serves us because often we’re using magic to treat the symptom without addressing the underlying issues. When you use magic to help you solve problems in the short term, the thing you must ask yourself is if you’re accounting for your own role in that problem. If you aren’t the problem will show up again, because the underlying issue hasn’t been addressed.
In contrast, long term practical magic takes into account the role of the person and seeks to actively work that role into the magical work in order to effect proactive change in the person’s life. For example my year-long or more elemental balancing rituals have been designed as a form of daily work that allows me to work with a given element and use it to transform my life by learning the necessary lessons that element has to offer.
This same principle applies to entities that you create. For example, I’ve created entities for the purposes of advancing a career (in the case of my partner) and one designed to help me be a safer driver, while also finding the best path. These are long term workings that are continually put into effect as a way of shaping and designing life in a manner that is beneficial to the person.
Of course this doesn’t mean all your problems are automatically solved. Long term workings can make your life easier, but there will be moments where a short term magical working is needed or where you just have to deal with life. But long term magic can make your life better overall and provide you the necessary direction and clarity to help you move your life in a proactive direction, instead of waiting for life to happen to you.
