My Interview with Abigail Doherty. This was a fascinating interview, where I learned about some intriguing energy work techniques as well as Abigail's work with animals. When to Walk Away from Working with Other people
Mostly I write about magical experiments on here. Today however, I had an adventure where I chose to walk away from a situation where I might've done magic with people. Now, I'm really picky about who I work with. I have definite criteria that need to be met:
- Must have a well-rounded background in magical practices and also non-magical disciplines. By well-rounded I mean someone who's studied magic extensively enough to know that the occult does not begin nor end with Crowley, and has some familiarity with not just hermeticism or chaos magic, but also Eastern approaches to magic. Being well-rounded in non-magical disciplines involves learning more a variety of disciplines such as finance, semiotics, the sciences, linguistics etc.
- Must have a critical, but open mind when it comes to experimentation. Know how to question the process and refine it.
- Must be able to show consistent effort in magical practice. No high holiday magicians here!
So today I was going to meet up with a small group of people who were trying to grow their magical group. I went mainly to see what they were doing and cause I'm curious about what others are doing. When I went there, I couldn't find them, mainly because they weren't where they said they would be. When I did encounter them, they wanted to go into a graveayrd to do their ritual. This made me feel uneasy. I don't believe in doing rituals in graveyards for the simple reasons that a graveyard is a very personal place for the dead and those people who come to honor their ancestors. None of the people I went with had ancestors there and neither did I. When they told me their ritual and mentioned it could be changed around in whatever way worked for other people, I knew at the point I couldn't work with them. Also my intuition had strongly picked up on the feeling that we were not wanted there and that the ritual was not welcome. I told them that it didn't feel right and I left without partaking in their ritual.
I walked away from working with these people because they didn't strike me as very organized or aware of magical practice. I questioned each of them a bit about their background and quickly realized they didn't seem to have what I might consider a solid foundation of magical practice. Nor were they at the place they indicated I should meet them, which seemed flaky to me. Finally, they didn't seem aware that there ritual might not be wanted. This especially bothered me, because if you practice magic, you ought to be able to sense if what you're doing is welcome or not and I definitely could tell that the dead did not want to be disturbed.
I never do magic with people I feel uneasy about. If I have any doubts, I walk away. And the reason I walk away is because you are sharing your energy with those people...It's important to be wise and careful about that. Think about your own standards for who you will practice with. What makes that person someone you'd work with? What tells you that you shouldn't work with someone? Think as well about the culture you want to be part of? Do these people represent that culture? If you have any doubts, walk away. You'll be doing yourself and those people a favor.