how magic works

Magical Experiments Podcast: Elemental Magic and Troubleshooting your Magic with Frater Barrabbas

In this episode Frater Barrabbas and I discuss elemental magic and talismans and how they work and also discuss how to troubleshoot your magic and work through your failures.

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Frater Barrabbas (Richmond, VA) is a practicing ritual magician who has studied magick and the occult for over forty years. He is the founder of a magical order called the Order of the Gnostic Star and he is an elder and lineage holder in the Alexandrian tradition of Witchcraft. Visit and learn more at www.FraterBarrabbas.com and fraterbarrabbas.blogspot.com

Magical Experiments Podcast: Experimenting with Magical Mechanics with Rich Kiska

In this episode Rich Kiska and I discuss experimenting with the mechanics of magic. Rich shares her spiritual journey and how she became a magical experimenter and then we discuss space/time magic, pop culture magic, and how to experiment with magic in general.

Rich Kiska offers spiritual services and works with The Emotion Code which involves divination through channeling and muscle response testing; astrology; identification and removal of energetic/spiritual blocks, contracts, curses, and demons, to name a few. Learn more here

Magical workings as an unfolding process of wholeness

One of the latest sources of inspiration in my magical work is a series of books by Christopher Alexander where he explores how to create life through architecture (affiliate link). While these books admittedly, on the surface, have little to do with esoteric secrets for summoning spirits or the other types of occult lore that is usually so favored by occultists, I nonetheless find them to be quite inspiring because of how they look at the process of creating a building where people feel a sense of life. There is something profound about a discipline that explores how to bring life to the process of building.

And I find that it carries over to magical work, provided one is willing to explore the possibilities and perspectives that are offered. I’m only a bit over halfway through the second book of the series, but nonetheless I have discovered a profound amount of insight and knowledge that be applied to both space/time magic in specific and magic as a discipline in general.

Magical Experiments Podcast: Balancing the Magic with the Mundane, with Soviet Mercedes

Soviet Mercedes and I get together and have a fun conversation around the importance of balancing your magical work with mundane activities. We discuss why it can be good to take a break from your magical practice and how that can help you create a baseline for your magical work, as well as sharing examples from our own experiences about how we’ve balanced the magic with the mundane.

A generative approach to results

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the process of magic and specifically how to develop an awareness of the organic nature of magical work. If tis sounds odd to you, its perhaps because for the most part, magic is not considered to be an organic process, so much as a designed process that in both a practical and spiritual sense is used to achieve specific outcome or results.

“So why Taylor, are you taking a different angle to magical work? What do you even mean when you talk about the organic nature of magical work?”

How to use magic to get quick results when you need them

When your life gets turned upside down and you have to scramble to get everything in order, knowing how to use magic to get quick results can make all the difference. On my Patreon I have added a new tier where I’ll be teaching a live class and this month’s topic will be on emergency magic. The video I make today gives you a taste of what you’ll get if you choose to become my patron at the live class level.

Why doesn't Magic always work?

Sometimes you do a magical working and the magic doesn’t seem to work. Why? You’ve gotten all the required resources, done all the steps, but despite doing all of that work the result you wanted didn’t manifest. I share some thoughts on why magic doesn’t always seem to work as well as how to troubleshoot your magical work.

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Why consistency matters in your magical practice

One of the most important lessons I learned in my magical work is the lesson of consistency, specifically the need to be consistent with a given practice of magic, especially when you’re learning that practice. From the very beginning of my magical practice to now I’ve applied a consistent approach to what I’ve learned in a few different ways. That consistent practice has instilled a level of discipline with me that has helped me become a better practitioner of magic, and helped in other venues of my life, such as with my writing.

When you aren’t consistent with your magical practice it is hard to create a truly sustainable practice, because you’re not giving yourself the benefit of sticking with that practice. Instead when you jump from one magical practice to another you only the barest taste of what that practice can provide you.

So how do you develop a consistent practice of magic?

Spirit relationships and the magic of writing with Stephanie Connolly

In this interview Stephanie and I discuss how spirit relationships based on respect and how to work with spirits. We also discuss writing about magic and what goes into writing a book, and how books speak to us.

Learn more about stephanie and her books at http://sjreisner.com

Learn more about Demonolatry at http://www.demonolatry.org

Learn how magic works: https://magical-experiments.teachable.com/p/home

Get free e-books: http://www.magicalexperiments.com/free-books

Become my patron: https://www.patreon.com/TaylorEllwood?fan_landing=true

Why magic isn't meant to be prescriptive

I discuss why magic isn’t meant to be prescriptive, but often is treated that way because of how it is written about. I also discuss how to take a more descriptive approach to writing about magic and what the benefits of such can be for people who are learning about magic.

Learn how magic works: https://magical-experiments.teachable.com/p/home

Get free e-books: http://www.magicalexperiments.com/free-books

Become my patron: https://www.patreon.com/TaylorEllwood?fan_landing=true

The role of visualization in magical work

I discuss the role of visualization in magical work and what the advantages and disadvantages of visualization are as well as how to use it effectively in your magical work.

Learn how magic works: https://magical-experiments.teachable.com/p/home

Get free books: http://www.magicalexperiments.com/free-books

How Results and Experiences can go hand in hand in magic

In results based magic, the result is king (or queen). The result you achieve dictates the success of your magical work or indicates you weren’t successful. It’s a simple principle, yet its effective because it establishes an obvious metric that can indicate whether your magic was successful or not. In fact, in my troubleshooting process, I use the result as the initial mechanism for troubleshooting, because whether your magic is successful or not, you always get a result. Even if that result is that you don’t achieve anything of what you hoped to achieve, that lack of a result is still an indicator of something and can help you uncover what the problem is in your magical working.

But I think something that is equally important in magical work, but often overlooked in the rush for results, is the actual experience that the magician has while doing the magical work. The experience itself is essential to magic, but it can be overlooked when we’re so fixated on the result that we don’t pay as much attention to the actual magical work. It can also be easy to take that work for granted, especially if we’ve done that work a few times. For instance, if I decide to work a spell I’ve done a couple times before, I might pay less attention to the experience because I’ve already done that work a couple times and I “know” what to expect.