One of the perceptions I find fascinating in regards to magical experimentation is the perception that there’s little to no research involved in the choice to experiment with magic. It’s an erroneous perception, but it can be forgiven because most of the time when people think of research in magic, they likely think of it in relationship to the attempt to replicate older magical workings. Certainly that is valid research and a lot of it goes on, when people are trying to either reconstruct older magical workings or learn more about the magic of antiquity.
But magical experimentation involves a fair amount of research as well. The majority of my magical experiments aren’t ones I come up with off the top of my head. They come about because I’ve gotten curious about a topic and decided to do some research in order to answer questions I have. From that research, magical experiments arise because I want to put the research into practical implementation.
Admittedly the research material isn’t always occult driven. While I certainly do keep up with occult literature and thought, I also like to explore non-occult perspectives, because sometimes those perspectives help me see things that I wouldn’t find in occult literature and thought. For example, in my ongoing space/time magic work, I’ve been researching different perspectives on how space is designed, worked with, and navigated through. By exploring these different perspectives, it provides me a solid foundation for which to do further space/time magical experimentation.
Not all my research is reading either. While I certainly love reading books, I also enjoy doing research in more experiential ways. For much of 2020, I’ve been learning about qi gong and how the body is experienced through the exercises that are done. Reading about those exercises wouldn’t provide the same level of awareness or research as actually doing the exercises and taking careful note of the actual experience.
When I decide to research a given subject I start with a question. That question is driven both by my curiosity and the experiences I’ve already had that inform the question. I use that question to help me start finding source material that I can use to start trying to answer the question. I do the research, whether that’s reading up on a subject or doing specific exercises in a given way. Then if I don’t think I’ll get an answer that’s satisfactory, I start coming up with experiments, because my research helps me discover the gaps, what’s missing or needs to be explored further than what is actually available on the topic. without doing the research I couldn’t come up with new magical workings or systems of magic, because I wouldn’t know where to start or what to look for. The research I do gives me direction and focus, as well as a foundation on which to create magical experimentation.
