spirits, Magic
Taylor Ellwood
The relationship between sacred kingship and ...

One of the books I’m reading lately is King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore and Doug Gillette. It’s a fascinating book that explores the archetypes of the mature and sacred masculine. This is currently part of the spiritual work that I’m engaged in as I explore my own relationship with masculinity and heal the ancestoral and contemporary wounds that I’m becoming aware of as it relates to how masculinity is treated and perceived in modern times.

One of the aspects I’m exploring in particular is related to sacred kingship and the land. I am in the process of exploring the new city and surrounding areas that I live in. While I’ve lived here for a year, I didn’t have much opportunity until recently to really begin exploring the area and developing a relationship with the land. I find it fitting and useful that part of the process has also involved cultivating a relationship with the land, particularly on the basis of the relationship has with their home and how that relationship plays out in sacromagical work one does in connecting with the land.

magick

There are no shortcuts in magic (or in life)

Every so often I get requests where a person asks me to help them obtain special powers through magic. In this episode of the magical experiments podcast I lay down the hard truth that there are no short cuts in magic and life and share some of my experiences and stories learning this truth. You’ll also learn why experience is the best teacher and how to let go of unrealistic expectations.

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Can you influence peoples' minds with magic

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What is the connection between telepathy, empathy, ESP and magic? In this episode of the magical experiments podcast I explore that question and share some of my own experiences around psychic perception and magical work. I also discuss the ethics that can be involved in this kind of work.

Combat and Protection Magic

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Magical Experiments Podcast : Can I do multiple types of magic?

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In the Magical Experiments Facebook group I was recently asked the following question: “Is it okay to do different types of magick at the same time, for example I am delving into PGM, Heptameron, and working with a deity (hekate)?”

In the latest episode of the magical experiments podcast I answer this question and share some thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of working with different types or systems of magic at the same time.

Magical Experiments Podcast: Is Magic a Quick Fix Solution?

Have you ever tried to magic your way out of a problem?

In this podcast episode I answer the question: Why do people think magic is a quick fix/solution to “mundane”problems, or issues that require “mundane” work.

I also explore the connection between the “mundane” world and magic and show that any division between the two is arbitrary and then share examples of how to marry the mundane to the magical.

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Magical Experiments Podcast: Return to Sender Experiment

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Sometimes the best response to a situation is to call back what belongs to you, while also returning what doesn’t belong to you. I recently decided to do a return to sender working, using a meditation shared by a friend. I have been working with it a few days and I have noticed some experiences that I have found useful. I share my thoughts on this work in the latest episode of the magical experiments process.

How grounding yourself improves your magic

When you think of the word grounding, what do you think of? What I think of when I consider grounding is the importance of being in presence in the moment I am in a way that connects me across all the levels of my being: Physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Let’s considered what grounded means in regards to each of these states of being.

Physically grounding yourself means taking care of your physical needs. For example, you should be making sure you get enough sleep each night. You also want to make sure your eating healthy food, moderating your use of substances and getting exercise each day. When you are grounded physically, you are also able to listen to your body, feel into the sensations it provides you and as a result adjust your lifestyle. A grounded person, physically is someone at peak health.

An emotionally grounded person is a person who is able to feel their emotions and be aware of them without reacting to them. They know that their emotions aren’t their identity. They are experiences the person is having. They provide valuable information that the person can use to be present to the situation they are in and at the same time the emotions don’t overwhelm the person. An emotionally grounded person is able to open to their sensitive heart and be fully present in a way that turns the emotions into energy for the situation and for the magic.

A mentally grounded person is someone who is aware of their thoughts, but doesn’t let their thoughts control them. They can be mindfully aware of their thoughts and consider them carefully without indulging in the monkey mind awareness that causes the mind to go in circles and circles. A person who is grounded mentally has clarity of thought and awareness and applies that clarity to help them make sound decisions.

A spiritually grounded person is in touch with their spiritual energies and with their allies. They are connected to the spirits around them, but don’t let that connection overwhelm them. They are able to see through the veil of time, but don’t let their oracular vision fool them into believing that their knowing is always accurate. The spiritually grounded person learns how to cultivate internal and external sources of energy and knows when to draw on them.

The grounded person overall knows when to take a rest from magic and other activities and also knows when to move ahead. They know how to monitor themselves, take care of the essentials and stay healthy in all the ways mentioned above. At a given time, you may find yourself ungrounded in one of these areas. When you do orient toward that area and do the work you need to do to get yourself back on track.

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How to accept where you are to get what you want

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Are you feeling stuck?

Caught up in the uncomfortable Discomfort?

I share how to turn that stuck state upside so you can get better results with your magical work. When we learn how to accept and relish the state we are in, that’s when we open the doors to potential and unlock the possibilities that we’ve been holding back because of how stuck we felt.

How to improve your energy work

Do you feel like you can’t sense energy?

Do you struggle with figuring out what to do with energy work?

I’ve got you handled. I’m going to answer these questions and share some tips to help you become a better energy worker.

And if you want to take your energy work to the next level, sign up for Advanced Energy Alchemy, starting August 10th.

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How to be Present with Tower Time

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I share how to recognize Tower Time in your life and describe how the Tower can actually be a really useful and powerful card and energy that shouldn’t be avoided. Instead we can welcome it and use it to help us transform our lives and turn the tower energy into momentum that works in our favor.

The Rules we live by define the magic we work

I’ve been taking a number of classes lately around men’s work and self-development and in one of the classes, there’s an exercise where you define your code of conduct, as a part of a process of learning how to master yourself and become the man you want to be. I think this exercise is applicable to anyone regardless of how they identify as a gender. What’s fascinating to me however is how the rules a person lives by (or lack thereof) define the magic that the person works, and indeed how the person surveys and experiences the world.

I’ve also been reading a book about this same topic where the author defines some rules to live by, so as to bring order to a chaotic life. The rules he shares are insightful because they aren’t moral rules so much as they are practical rules that define the way people tend to organize themselves, both within themselves, with other people, and with the environment they live in. This illustrates to me that there are chosen rules, i.e. rules where a person says I’m agreeing to live this way because this rule or value resonates with my deepest identity and I want to consciously show up with that way in my live. And then there are systemic rules, rules set by society at large that may favor some people over others and encourage a conformity in order to potentially benefit from your position. And finally there are environmental rules, which are rules that operate outside of human consciousness or control. These are rules all of us deal with and they aren’t easily altered, if they can be altered at all.

A life that operates without rules is a chaotic life, a situational response that always tries to adapt to the moment, but creates little, if any, stability. I have lived that life and I have found it to be an unsatisfying life, because there is little certainty or consistency that comes with it. Over time, with lots of effort, I’ve reoriented my life toward living a more orderly life. And even now I am continuing that process because I find that the more I define my life by rules that make sense and organize my way of being, the more focused I get with creating the life I want to live.

The rules we live by define the magic we work. As you get more and more clear around your life and the rules you live by, it shapes your outlook on your life and it shapes the magic you work. It creates the container in which your life operates, and the expectations you have around that container. Some of those rules are consciously chosen, and many of them are unconsciously chosen. The ones that are unconsciously chosen usually arrive from a combination of ancestral and familial patterns of behavior and societal norms and values. The rules that we consciously choose are ones we pick for ourselves based on an awareness around something we want to change in our lives or a way we want to behave in the world, in order to achieve specific results.

Magic is one process that can make us aware of the rules we’ve unconsciously chosen because it brings us up close and personal with our desires and it allows us to see what’s getting in the way of accomplishing those desires. Many people use magic to bend the rules of reality or find some angle that gets them what they want, but in that process they necessarily ought to take a moment to know themselves and discover what is it within them that is calling for that desire.

Sometimes what we discover is that we create rules for ourselves based around our shadows. For example, if you find yourself in a consistent situation where you are continually getting rejected by people around you, there is likely something within you that craves something about that rejection. You might find that statement odd, but consider that the rejection is a symptom of a homeostatic state of being which is comfortably uncomfortable. You know that state of being. It is familiar to you and there are no surprises to it. It ends with you being rejected, but at least you know to expect that. The problem is that leads you to settling for less.

You can only break this rule when you figure out what you getting from it that satisfies you. And you are getting some kind of satisfaction, even if it is the satisfaction of feeling comfortable with the situation, even though you don’t like it. It becomes a rule of your life, until you break it, and make a new rule, a consciously chosen rule, that you live by. Of course there can also be subtle variations of the former rule and what you’ll need to do is a deep dive into these variations and iron them out and in the process change your relationship with yourself and the agreements you’re making with the universe.

The rules we live be define the magic we work and the results we get. What are the rules you are living by? What are the results you’re getting. If you’re not satisfied with them, it might be time to do some deep work around transforming them so you can also change your life.

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Inner Work leads to better results

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I discuss the relationship between inner work and result. When we do inner work it helps us get better results because we know ourselves and we are living a life by design and by specific values. Inner work helps us figure out who we are and what we want and how to manifest it.

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What's underneath the Squiggle: An Exploration of Sigils

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picture copyright Taylor Ellwood 2024

Lately I’ve been finding myself fascinating by sigils and symbols again. Whether you’re conjuring a spirit with a sigil or creating a custom sigil for the purposes of manifesting a desire into reality, what makes sigils so versatile is how they can symbolically represent and mediate specific transmissions of information. Yet what’s underneath the sigil?

What’s underneath is something the sigil can’t quite describe or represent. The sigil presents a face to the world that allows us to make sense of the intangible and give it a form we can relate to. It allows us to pack ideas and concepts into the shape and recall them and it allows us to send them out into the world, to create a path of manifestation that turns essence into form and imagination into reality.

Yet a sigil is more even than that. It is a structure that creates a container to describe the essence that is being worked with, whether that’s a spirit’s essence or the essence of a desired result. The sigil becomes a key to unlock that essence and also learn the essence and make it part of your being. The symbol internalizes the essence within you and it becomes manifest through you.

The reason sigils work so well is become of how they work through us. The sigils embed themselves in our consciousness which in turn is acted upon through our actions. It’s a chain of manifestation that acts on the path of least resistance. The sigils, as symbols, are accepted more readily by our consciousness and seed the mind with possibility which then becomes reality, by the convergence of the outer variables of the world and the inner actions of the person.

The sigil is a story as well. We can get to the heart of the story by meditating on the sigil. If the sigil is for the spirit then it becomes path to the spirit that allows the practitioner to interface with the story. If the sigil is for a possibility it speaks to all the variables of the possibility. What’s underneath the squiggle? A universe waiting to be explored.

The commonalities of magick

Different magical traditions and systems and practices are actually more alike than different and why a lot of times the differences have more to do with our own subjective opinions than the actual substance of what is practiced. I also share why its continually important to learn other systems and traditions of magic, even when your practice is mainly oriented around one system or tradition.

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Constructing a personal cosmological system of magic

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I discuss how to create a personal cosmological system of magic and what the benefits of creating such a system are, as well as how it can transform your overall approach to magical work. I share an example of a system I’m currently refining and developing and the medium I’m using to represent the cosmological system.

The Eros of movement

Eros, aside of being considered a Greek Deity, is also a concept that shows up a lot in multiple spiritual contexts. The usual context is around sex, because Eros as a force is classically associated with Eros as a god of love, but if you dig into that classical context you can discover there are different myths and that Eros is also associated with movement, as an overall force. Eros is an erotic force, but that eroticism goes beyond sex into other dimensions of being and identity that are just as relevant as sex can be to the experience of Eros.

The experience of Eros is the experience of life. Movement is one of the ways we encounter and experience Eros. The most obvious form of Eros is found through sex and its not surprising that its emphasized so much because sex can be a very powerful and life affirming experience (though it also contains the seed of death within it). The one problem with sex is that it can also be a distraction from the experience of Eros. What I mean by that statement is that the pleasure aspect of sex can override the experience of movement and life and become the most important experience. While pleasure is good to experience, it doesn’t always create the desired intimacy that two or more people may want to experience with each other. Pleasure can be an essential part of Eros, but an embodied expression of Eros doesn’t focus on one sensation over others.

For example, if you practice sex magic, you know that if you fixate on pleasure it actually takes you away from the sex magic you are working. Sex magic isn’t focused on pleasure. It may use pleasure as a source of energy for the magic, but it never lets the pleasure become the reason to do magic. When pleasure becomes the reason to do the magic, the Eros leaves the experience and the magic isn’t as powerful as a result.

Eros as it is related to movement in general is a practice that brings you into intimate awareness with yourself and the environment. For example, when I practice Kung Fu or Qi Gong and I am connected to Eros I feel each sensation as I move and I am feeling it on ever level of my being. I am also connecting with how those movements bring me into awareness with the environment around me as well as whatever is present within that environment. Eros as movement allows us to connect to the overall embodied experience of reality…our bodies, but also the body of the universe and for that matter all the other life, in all the other forms that exist.

Meditating on this awareness of Eros can open you to how movement acts as an elemental force in your live. Movement is fundamental to Eros. Eros is the underlying power of movement. Eros is the first movement of the universe and so Eros goes hand in hand with movement and may even be thought of as movement, in and of itself. The eroticism of movement isn’t inherently sexual, so much as it is connective and that is true understanding of eroticism in general. Eros is a connecting principle and that connection occurs in many different ways.

A practical example of this…go for a walk and spend that walk paying attention to how the act of walking connects you to your environment and to whatever is in the environment. Pay close attention to your movement as well as to the sensual experience you have as you open your senses to the environment. Part of what you are experiencing is Eros at work and when you apply that understanding to your walk, it will change the way you experience yourself and the world as well as movement itself.

Working with Eros is a discipline as well. It requires discipline to connect with movement and not get caught up in distraction. The distraction is the choice to focus on sensation to the exclusion of the work. When we work with Eros we accept the sensation as part of the experience but we stay with the movement of Eros and allow it to guide us deeper into the mystery of the connection instead of letting the sensation take us in ourselves and out of connection with everything else. It is the difference between senseless hedonism and mindful awareness.