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.

the process of magic

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.

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.

Why its important to revisit old magical workings

When you have performed lots of magical workings and created specific types of outcomes, it can helpful to revisit that work. I share a few reasons for revisiting old work and also explain why it can be helpful to revise older workings, or shut them down, if they are still working in the background.

,

The process of experimenting with magic

,

I think the conventional image that people must have of a magical experimenter is someone running around with crazy hair, doing all kinds of off the wall magical workings, which may or may not be grounded in conventional magical theory and practice. I can understand if that’s the image that comes to mind, but the reality of magical experimentation is that it is a careful process, grounded in the experiences of the magician and the work they have done up to the point of experimentation.

,

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

How to figure out what you want

When you know what you want, you can manifest it. But figuring out what you want isn’t always easy and there can be a lot of distractions along the way that lure you from what you want. You have to apply the discipline of essentialism to keep you focused on what matters, but you also need to explore what you might want to narrow down what truly matters and then focus on pursuing it. In this video I share my thoughts around this process and what I’ve learned over the years.

How to apply tension-resolution systems to magic

In the book Creating (Affiliate link) the author shares an exercise where throughout the day of a workshop he and his partner randomly pour 7 glasses of water, but don’t explain why they are doing it to the workshop attendees. At the end of the day they ask the attendees to tell them why they are doing this activity and various people share their theories as to why. In the end, it turns out the teachers were doing this activity to illustrate the principle of tension-resolution.

What is the principle of tension-resolution?

It is this: Where there is tension, people will naturally seek to find a resolution for that tension. The author points out that often what is accomplished is NOT a resolution, because people attempt to resolve tension out of a need to control that tension, without fully considering where that need is coming from. It’s a useful lesson that demonstrates the limitations of what we know and control, because it also reveals that in making the choice to act upon tension, we may end up speculating and trying to fill in the gaps instead of being truly open and curious.

Finding a place to go in your magical work

For many magicians, the magic work stops once they get the result they are seeking to manifest. This makes sense, especially with practical magic, where so much of the point is about getting specific results in order to change your life in some way that ideally improves it. You get the result and the magic work ends because you’ve obtained what you want.

Yet, I find that the focus on results is so limited. That may seem odd, especially if the point is to get a result. After all, if I get the result, isn’t that the point? Why is that so limiting? There’s a couple reasons its so limiting, and why we need to think beyond the obvious and work the magic beyond the result.

The first reason is that the achievement of a result inevitably brings with it consequences. There’s a ripple effect, because the result doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You get a result, and what you bring with it (which so many magicians fail to recognize) are the changes that occur because you got the result. You work magic to get a job and that job brings with it change. You work magic to get a lover, and you get the lover and everything that comes with that person. You work magic to change some aspect of your life and you get that result and the changes that spill out from that result.

The current reality vs the desired result

In practical magic, one of the interesting issues that can arise around results is determining whether or not the current reality has been factored into the magical working. What I mean by current reality is the reality that we’re dealing with, which we want to change. It may seem rather obvious that a person would factor the current reality of a situation into the magical working being done to address that situation. However that may not always be the case.

It is rather easy to get fixated on the desired result, because that desired result is something we want. It moves us away from the reality we’re dealing with and brings us to a reality we want to deal with. Yet there is a benefit to the current reality that we need to consider: The current reality grounds us in what is, and also informs us of the gap between what is and what we to manifest.

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

Why you need to work the process of magic

Sometimes, in your magical practice, you can be so caught up in the results you want that you forget something essential about your practice: that you need to work the process of your magic and worry less about the results. I found myself having this re-realization recently because I was getting fixated on a specific result and when I recognized I was getting fixated, I gently reminded myself that I needed to re-orient and focus on the process instead of the result.

Now it may seem strange to say that in the context of results based magic. After all, if you’re focused on getting a result, shouldn’t the result matter the most? That’s a good question to ask and it is fair to say that conventionally results are treated as king/queen in that context. But as I’ve learned with my practice, it can actually be more beneficial to focus less on the result and more on the process, especially when you’re engaged in long term magical work.

What do you need to design a magical working?

One of the questions I get asked is what does a person need, in order to be able to design their own magical working. It’s a good question to ask, because designing a magical working does have some requirements, which can make a difference in developing an effective magical working or system of magic that gets results. However the usual suspects of magical tools, spells, etc., that people think they need in order to design a magical working or a system aren’t necessarily what you need.