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.

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Can you still practice pop culture magic if the pop culture has been cancelled?

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The other day in the Pop Culture Magick Facebook group I asked the question: “Can you still practice pop culture magic if the pop culture has been cancelled?” I used the recent example of J. K . Rowlings and her comments on the Trans community as an example where someone might practice pop culture magic, but have an issue with what the creator of that pop culture said or did. could that person still work with the pop culture itself.

If you click the link above, you’ll get to see the responses to my question from the community. There were answers all across the spectrum on this issue and I feel like all of them were well considered. But here, I thought I would share my own answers to this question.

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Elemental Balancing Ritual Creativity Month 22

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7-22-2020 Today when I did my meditation the archangels told me that the next three months is all about an integration of everything I’ve done before with the Sphere of Art, as well as the Qi Gong I’m doing. “That’s more than enough work for you right there, especially with everything else you’ll be doing.” And they told me that all of this would continue to lay the ground work for transformation. So I accepted what they said and just focused on the integration. It is important to make time for the work you’ve done, to ground it and embody it in you and that time, for me, is right now.

7-23-2020 I’m rereading the Slight Edge and he makes an excellent point that changing how you think about what you do matters, because how you think about what you do dictates how you actually do it, and if you even do it. What makes a person successful at whatever they’re doing is the thought that seeds the actions and keeps them doing what needs to be done, even when the person is seeming to fail. It’s a good reminder for me.

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How to deal with Hostile Spirits

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Not all spirits have your best interests at heart. Sometimes you’ll encounter hostile spirits and in such a situation you need to figure out what to do about the hostile spirit, because if you don’t do anything, it’s going to make your life miserable. So how do you handle a hostile spirit?

Let’s first consider the reasons a spirit might be hostile. The first reason could be because the spirit is inimical to life. It’s function is about destruction and breaking things down and you happen to be in the way. It’s nothing personal. It just doesn’t want anything to do with you and you happen to be in the way of its function.

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Walking with Spirits is available for Pre-order

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Walking with Spirits is available for pre-order!

In Walking with Spirits, I share my process for connecting and working with spirits that enables you to get consistent results, while building collaborative relationships with the spirits you work with.

Working with spirits doesn’t have to involve the coercion of spirits that you find in conventional approaches to spirit work. What I share is an alternative approach that enables you to develop a friendly relationship with the spirits you work with and allows you to get results. Instead of trying to force a spirit to do something for you, you’ll learn the following:

  • How to create a rapport with spirits that allows you to become allies.

  • Why a co-equal relationship with spirits is better than any other type of relationship you could form.

  • What the problems are with conventional Western spirit work techniques such as what you find in the grimoires.

  • How to use experiential embodiment to connect with spirits.

  • How to use a simplified approach to invocation and evocation that allows you to work with spirits and get results.

If you’re ready to learn a different approach to working with spirits, where you don’t create enemies, and instead have life long relationships where you and the spirits from working with each other, Walking with Spirits will show you a different path for working with spirits that gets you results.

How Results and Experiences can go hand in hand in magic

In results based magic, the result is king (or queen). The result you achieve dictates the success of your magical work or indicates you weren’t successful. It’s a simple principle, yet its effective because it establishes an obvious metric that can indicate whether your magic was successful or not. In fact, in my troubleshooting process, I use the result as the initial mechanism for troubleshooting, because whether your magic is successful or not, you always get a result. Even if that result is that you don’t achieve anything of what you hoped to achieve, that lack of a result is still an indicator of something and can help you uncover what the problem is in your magical working.

But I think something that is equally important in magical work, but often overlooked in the rush for results, is the actual experience that the magician has while doing the magical work. The experience itself is essential to magic, but it can be overlooked when we’re so fixated on the result that we don’t pay as much attention to the actual magical work. It can also be easy to take that work for granted, especially if we’ve done that work a few times. For instance, if I decide to work a spell I’ve done a couple times before, I might pay less attention to the experience because I’ve already done that work a couple times and I “know” what to expect.

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How to do internal work around long term issues

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I share how to do internal work around long term issues in your life and explain why you can't always resolve those issues in one shot.

Learn how to do internal work: https://magical-experiments.teachable.com/p/internal-work

Get free ebooks on magic at http://www.magicalexperiments.com/free-books

Book Reviews March Through August 2020

Book Review: Pain Free by Pete Egoscue (Affiliate link)

I picked this book up on the recommendation of a colleague and I’ m glad I did. The author does an excellent job of explaining why are feeling pain in your body and then shows you simple stretches you can do daily to relieve the pain. Not only did this book help me understand the source of chronic pain I’ve dealt with, but it also freed me of that pain, through the stretches. I’ve noticed an overall improvement in my health since using this book and I highly recommend it.

Book Review: Six Ways by Aidan Wachter (Affiliate link)

This book is packed with exercise and concepts that will keep you busy. I would highly recommend it for anyone starting or with some experience who wants to challenge what they know to discover what they can learn. Aidan draws from a variety of perspectives and his experiences and makes the work approachable for his readers. Don't just read this book. Work the exercises and practices and you'll see your magical practice transform.

Book Review: Egregores By Mark Stavish (Affiliate link)

This is more of an academic treatise on egregores than anything else, but the author presents an interesting take on the subject and explores examples of different egregores and how those egregores can effect the people that work with them, for better or worse. He also presents ways to break the connection with an egregore. It’s a good book on the topic and worth giving a read to better understand the nature of egregores.

Book Review: How to Meet and Work with Spirit Guides by Ted Andrews (Affiliate Link)

This was the first book I ever read on magic. I recently re-read this book and even reading it many years later, a lot of the material ages well. Some of it would now be considered culturally appropriative, but overall the material is solid and the techniques and practices work. If you’re wanting an introduction to the spirit world this is a good book to read.

Book Review: Endless Ideas by Sean Platt and Neeve Silver (affiliate link)

If you feel creatively stumped for ideas, this book is a must read. While most of the practices they describe in the book are ones I already do, I can vouch for the fact that they work because I have a ton of creative ideas. What’s nice is that while this book is focused on generating ideas for writing, you can apply the concepts and techniques to any discipline and get similar results.

Book Review: Opening the Energy Gates of your Body by Bruce Frantzis (affiliate link)

This is an excellent book to read with easy to follow exercises that can help you start learning qi gong. The author does a great job of breaking down the actions you need to take, along with example diagrams and pictures. It’s a good supplement to in person or video training and what it really teaches you is how to cultivate the qi in your body. I have done these practices and benefited greatly from them.

Book Review: Living Spirits by BJ Swain (Affiliate link)

This is a comprehensive exploration of Western occult magic practices with spirits. The author does a good job laying out how various western practices work and its clear he’s researched the subject extensively (as well as done the practices). I like the analyses he provides in the appendices and found the book to overall be thought provoking. Even when I didn’t agree with the author, I really respected the way he presented the material and how accessible he made it. If you want to understand Western spirit work practices this is a great book to pick up.

The Sigil Chain Technique

In mid June 2020, I developed the Sigil Chain technique. I created this technique because I had hit a point in my day job where I was feeling really burned out with that job and also feeling like there was no end in sight. At the same time I was also feeling frustrated with the lack of recognition my work was getting and the fact that no one wanted to interview me about my latest books. I also have some long term plans I want to realize and all of this resulted me in creating a technique so I could expedite my freedom from the day job, get some recognition and awareness for my writing and start turning my long terms plans into realities.

The first thing I did was sigilize all the known variables affecting the situation. I also included a sigil for unknown variables, just in case. As you can see in the picture above, there’s no lines connecting the sigils like you would do in my comic book sigil method or my sigil web method. The reason for that is that I wanted to make this particular sigil method non-linear, instead of linear. I thought it might prove to be an interesting experiment.

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Ongoing Work with Qi Gong

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Over the last few months I’ve been learning some different qi gong methods and practicing them, and while doing that also integrating into the Sphere of Art work, where I’ve found a natural fit for them. In this post I thought I would share the work in some detail, and what I’ve discovered as I’ve done it.

The qi gong practices I’m mainly focused on doing is Energy Gates and Gods Playing in the Clouds. Energy Gates is a combination of a standing practice with a few movements, which when done properly move the qi through the body in a spiraling manner. Gods Playing in the Clouds is a set of movements that works through all of the energy channels and the nei-gong. I’ve currently learned 3 of the movements and I’m learning a 4th one now. I’m also taking a 4 weekend intensive which explores the spine and which I’m finding is relevant to the rest of the work. I’m practicing the Qi Gong between 1-2 hours currently, though I plan to increase that a bit more once I wrap up the day job and I figure out what my new routine will look like.

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Elemental Balancing Ritual Creativity Month 21

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6-23-2020 Yesterday I switched over to the supernal of Hod, Netzach, and Yesod. Appropriately enough as well I began learning more qi gong in relationship to the placement of the feet and how to move from the hell to the ball of the foot and back again and how that movement directs the chi. I think this is appropriate because this supernal is very much about the movement going back and forth.

When I did my qi gong exercises I felt the subtle movement of the qi moving up and down my body as I shifted my feet. It was fascinating to feel and it made me appreciate again how important it is to be in the body and be present with what you are experiencing in the body.

Practical steps for Reinventing your Magical Practice

In a previous post I shared some thoughts and experiences around how to start over with your magical practice. In this post I’m going to share some practical steps to take when you decide to start over and reinvent your magical practice. These steps can help you figure out the best path forward with going back to the basics and then building your new magical practice from there.

1. Assess your magical practices. The first step is simple, yet hard. You need to take a critical look at your current magical practices and determine what’s working and what isn’t working. And you need to be willing to let go of all of those practices, even the ones that are working, because while they may be working in some ways, they may be getting in your way, ultimately. You can only determine by looking at where you are in your life and at how your spiritual practices have helped get you there.

Is Success and Happiness integral to Magic?

Recently I shared a friend’s memetic flowchart about cursing and how to evaluate the effectiveness of that curse, based on the curser’s happiness, success, and whether or not they have their lives in order. I saw another friend share some thoughts which may or may not have been in response to the memetic flowchart. He essentially made the point that a person doesn’t have to have their lives in order or be happy and successful in order to practice effective magic and that using such metrics to assume the effectiveness of a person’s magic or lack thereof is faulty. He makes a good point and this leads me to ask an important question.

Is success and happiness (and for that matter having your life in order) integral to getting results in magic?

On the surface, the answer is an easy no. People can practice magic and get results and not have their lives together or be happy and successful. And these same people can curse other people. I should know because I’ve been cursed a few times by people that didn’t have their act together and aren’t happy or successful people in any sense of the word and for a short time the curses worked until I figured out what was going on and took appropriate action to remedy the situation.

But I’m going to give a more nuanced answer here, based on my own experiences. I want to be clear this isn’t a commentary on other peoples’ lives or magical practice per se, but simply an illustrative example of my own life and where happiness, success, and having my life together fits into my magical practice.

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Walking with Magical Entities is now available

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Walking with Magical Entities is Now Available!

Learn how to Create and Work with servitors, egregores, and thought forms to get consistent results.

In Walking with Magical Entities, I share my streamlined approach for creating and working with magical entities that enables you to get consistent results. I’ll show you how to design and launch entities in three phases, and how to work with them to get better results that transform your life.

Creating magical entities doesn’t have to be a complicated operation. All you need is a simple, but effective guide for determining how your entity will work and how it will get you results. This book is that guide, and in it you’ll learn the following:

  • What magical entities are and why we have a symbiotic relationship with them.

  • How to define and create your entity using the desired result as your starting point.

  • How to program the entity with the right fuel source, actions, and abilities so it can accomplish your result.

  • How to troubleshoot and revise your entity if it isn’t producing the results you want.

  • How to develop an effective relationship with your entity, where you get better results and enhance the overall quality of your life.

  • Case studies and examples of created entities with commentary on why I created them and what worked and didn’t work.

A magical entity can be one of the most powerful magical tools available to you. Learn how to create and work with magical entities, so you can get consistent results that transform your life.