Knowing what you want and following through on what you want must be balanced with knowing what your enough looks like. I share the pitfalls that can happen when you don’t recognize what is enough and share why its so important to build a strong foundation around what you’ve manifested in your life.
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.
Learning how to do leads to why
I was recently watching a qi gong training video and the instructor made a really interesting point: Learning How to Do leads to why. The point he was making is that if you want to know the why behind an activity you are doing, you first must necessarily learn how to do the activity. It’s a salient point to make and one often missed when people get caught up in trying to understand the why, without doing anything experiential first.
I will, on occasion, have people ask me questions about a given practice, which is very reasonable to do, but at a certain point the answer becomes, “Do the work,” if the work hasn’t already been done. The reason is simple: A conceptual framework of the actual work can only take you so far. Until you apply the concepts into actual practice, you don’t know the concepts. Theory without practice can only take you so far, especially if theory becomes a crutch that keeps you away from the practice.
I apply this to my own practice by making the choice to do qi gong everyday. Learning the practice allows me to experientially open myself to the concepts and turn them into felt experiences that shape my understanding of the concepts. Each movement I perform and learn leads me deeper into the mysteries I’m exploring, allowing me to discover how to deepen my practice but also illustrating the why behind the practice.
Learning how to do something will naturally create more questions, but it will also answer a lot of your questions. The new questions can lead you deeper into the practice, and while the insights someone else offers can be valuable, the real work begins when you answer your own questions through the engagement in your practice and discover the why through the embodiment of your practice. The whys’ you discover will lead you on to richer and deeper insights, providing clarity and focus around the work.
How to get out of your tunnel vision
One of the challenges a person faces is their own tunnel vision about what they know and what they experience. I share some thoughts on how to recognize your own blind spots in your life and practice and share why I think this is essential, because it is very easy to get in our own ways and limit ourselves with the perspectives we don’t cultivate.
Integrating Qi Gong into Magical Workings
One of the activities I’ve lately been doing, while performing the Sphere of Art, has involved doing some of the Qi gong movements I’ve learned. I was inspired to do this one day, just for the sake of seeing what if anything would happen if I started integrating qi gong into the SOA. I did this with two different Qi Gong movements, Cloud Hands (affiliate link) and Heaven and Earth Qi Gong (affiliate link) and what I found is that with one of those moments it seamlessly integrated into the SOA work, while the other did not.
Pop culture magic and wintering
I am finally coming out of my wintering. Its been a year long process, but in the last few weeks I’ve felt something within me switch. While there is still grief over recent life changes, I felt like the winter snow and ice is melting and the seeds of Spring are beginning to sprout, with the promise of possibilities turning into realities. Still in order to even get to that place, I had to go through the experience of wintering. This proved to be a transformative experience and one of the allies I drew on what Johnny Lawrence from Cobra Kai.
At the beginning of Cobra Kai, Johnny is going through a wintering experience of his own. He’s washed up, just going through the motions, and he has to embark on a hero’s journey to discover himself, but also to help his students. Of course, as with any such journey, Johnny inevitably encounters his share of troubles some of which are created by his own actions. A lot of the times Johnny trips himself up and I could relate to that, because I’ve done the same. It was easy, as a result, to work with him during my own wintering experience.
Magical Experiments Podcast: Elemental Magic with Ivo Dominguez Jr
For the second episode of Magical Experiments Podcast, I have the great pleasure of hosting Ivo Dominguez Jr and we discuss elemental magic and how to incorporate it in your life. We also discuss the problem with categorizations and Ivo shares a couple exercises you can do with elemental magic.
Watch the video on Patreon (Note this interview will be available to the public for a week and then after that only available to people who subscribe to the podcast Tier or above on my patreon.
How to keep track of your magical projects
Keeping track of your magical projects is essential to staying on top of the work, knowing the results, and tracking the successes and failures. I share some ideas on how you can track your work, whether you are solitary or working with partners.
Identity as the compilation of the past
In the last week and a half I’ve been engaged in an experiment around how I frame my past, in relationship to my present. This experiment came about as a result of reading The Courage to be Happy (affiliate link) In that book the author makes the point that people often use the past to define the present, justifying their current circumstances because of what previously happened. Certainly, this has been my own experience and I found myself in a place where I was feeling on edge because of events that had happened over the course of the last year.
The author makes the point that an alternate perspective can be adapted, where we consider what meaning a person’s present identity is giving to the past. He also argues that the past doesn’t exist, because its something that can’t be regained It is simply gone. Instead what happens is that people compile their past experiences and use them to justify their current sense of identity. Anything that runs counter to the present experience they want to cultivate is conveniently forgotten and ignored. Consequently what ought to be considered is that a person’s now defines their past as opposed to the past defining the present.
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.
Knowing, not-knowing, and power
I discuss a realization I had around tension, knowing, and not-knowing and how all of this relates to power or the experience of not having power, and why this is important to us as magicians and creatives.
Building a foundation in magic
What does it mean to build a foundation in your magical practice and in your life? I share my thoughts and experiences around this concept of a foundation and how it can change your life if you approach it in the right way. I get philosophical and talk about what it really means to live a magical life and why that isn’t always as easy as one thinks, and I read an introduction Storm Constantine wrote in one of my magical journals.
Breaking the web of reality
In Living Magick (Affiliate link) one of the authors makes an interesting claim about how magic can be used to fundamentally break the web of reality, though apparently it can’t be taught, but only carried out as a unique act (Needless to say I don’t agree with THAT assessment). In contrast, in The Elements of Spellcrafting (affiliate link), the author argues that magic is not the direct cause of change, but is merely an influence of change. I agree with him that a lot of magic is more influence based, but I do think magic can, under the right circumstances have causal aspects to it, and be quite a direct force in a person’s life. These two opposing perspectives, where one can break the web of reality (although supposedly only in a unique way) and that magic is only an influence instead of a direct cause of change illustrates the weaknesses in modern occult theories and the limitations that we all too often readily accept in the explanations other people offer us. My own perspectives and theories and processes have their limitations as well, which is one reason I always say challenge what I share, because its not gospel truth, anymore than what these other two authors, or all the rest share.
On Madness and Magic
I share some thoughts on the role of madness in magic and my own experiences around divine madness and how it shapes my spiritual work and path.
My process for creating a magical space out of my home
I recently moved into my own space, and this gave me the opportunity to create a magical space out of my home, because the space is entirely my own to design and shape as I please. I decided to employ principles of organic design that I’ve been learning about from Christopher Alexander’s works as well as Sarah Goldhagen’s work on the topic. Both of these people, as far as I know don’t practice magic. They are architects that help design buildings and landscapes. Their knowledge of designed space is quite profound and has been very useful to me in developing a space of my own that not only reflects who I am but allows me to turn my lived in space into a spiritual sanctuary for my magical practice.
I mention their works because as always I find that the majority of my inspiration in magical practices comes from outside the magical current, where the perspectives of other disciplines can be fruitfully employed to inform the way we practice magic. In this case, I’ve taken the principles these authors have described in their books and used them to help me create an organic generative space that enhances my spiritual work, connects with the entity of the home I’m living in (and allows it to become part of the spiritual work), and at the same creates a space that is very comfortable for people who want to visit. In this article, I will walk you through my thought process and the overall development of this as a case study example of how spatial design can be employed to create an ongoing magical space to work and live in.
Should ongoing magical work be kept secret
Should ongoing magical work be kept to yourself? I discuss the pros and cons of keeping magical work to yourself and explain why I share my own work so publicly. I also share some exciting updates!
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.
Memory Resonance technique
I recently saw the movie The Green Knight. It was a fascinating movie to see because of how it evoked specific experiences during the watching of the movie. Whether this was intentional or simply a byproduct of my own spiritual sensitivity, I couldn't tell you. But what I can tell you is that any such experience can be stored away and used as a way to help you sync up with related experiences.
I call this the memory resonance technique and the way it works is that you use the experiences you are having to connect with the memory of other experiences, and in turn you use those memories to enhance the current experience and open you further to liminal reality.
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.
A generative approach to results
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the process of magic and specifically how to develop an awareness of the organic nature of magical work. If tis sounds odd to you, its perhaps because for the most part, magic is not considered to be an organic process, so much as a designed process that in both a practical and spiritual sense is used to achieve specific outcome or results.
“So why Taylor, are you taking a different angle to magical work? What do you even mean when you talk about the organic nature of magical work?”