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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. In my experience the following can be useful for helping you design magical workings:
Curiosity
You must be curious and willing to asking questions. Designing a magical working, or modifying one, comes about in part because you aren’t satisfied with easy answers and you want to discover answers to your questions. You’re also curious about what magic can do and you know the only way to truly discover that is to create your own experiences, which includes designing and executing your own magical workings.
The right questions
There really aren’t any wrong questions, but ideally if you’re designing your own magical working, you’re asking some questions over and over again, with every experience you have. One such question involves asking what you would get rid of or strip from a magical working (and why) and another question asks what you would add or improve in an existing magical working.
When I design my own magical workings or even systems of magic, I design them around a gap that exists and can’t be filled in by conventional knowledge and explanations. The only way to fill that gap is to develop something specifically designed to address the gap. One such example in my case is the Inner Alchemy of Life system I developed as a way to work with the Neurotransmitters and microbial life of the body. That system was developed to address a gap that existing healing modalities couldn’t address, because no other healing modality worked with neurotransmitters or microbial life as spirits.
Finding the gap will cause you to ask questions and sometimes those questions can only be answered by designing your own solution to respond to the gap.
Foundational knowledge and experiences
You do need foundational knowledge of magic and possibly other disciplines, depending on problem you're trying to solve. You also need to have experiences that you can draw on to help you examine and test the magical working you design. For instance, I didn’t start developing my own magical workings until I had practiced magic for two years. The first two years provided me enough foundational knowledge and experiences to start asking questions and turning ideas into practical magic workings. Naturally the longer you practice magic, and the more you learn about life in general…well that will its own effect on how you design magical workings. At the time of this writing I’ve been practicing for over 27 years and the knowledge and experiences that I’ve gained over that time has changed some of how I design and develop magical workings and systems.
And finally…
What you really need in order to design a magical working or a system of magic is your own willingness to challenge what you know in order to discover what you can learn. It’s very easy to tell ourselves what we can’t do, based on what we know, but part of magical experimentation involves making the decision to challenge what you know in favor of discovering what you can learn. If you can do that, then you’ll never be limited by what you know, because you’ll always be seeking what you can learn and this in turn will aide you in designing your own magical workings.
Of course, if you want some additional help around designing your own magic, you may want to check out my newest book Magic by Design.
