Magick is not a gift or a blessing, but a responsibility. If you are lucky enough to find magick, you are one of the elite. You may not feel like it yet, as you struggle with the ups and downs of life, but to know magick is to be one of the elite, and it is your responsibility to live the best life that you can with magick.

If you’re new to magick this may sound over the top and head in the clouds, but if you’ve seen even one thing happen, because you performed magick, you have seen the true potential of life.

There was a time in my life when I was overwhelmed with jealousy. A young man who attended my school – a quite ordinary school – came from a wealthy family, and being brought up around wealth made him different. To him, it seemed absolutely normal to paint watercolours of birds at the weekend, while the rest of us were walking around town with our hands in our pockets, contemplating shoplifting or other petty criminal distractions. His paintings were beautiful, but I didn’t see them as skilful, only as the privileged output of a lucky boy who’d been born into money.

I was wrong about that, because money and opportunity can be squandered. There are many wealthy people who become nothing more than idle and greedy, dazzled by baubles and glamour. Rather than being consumed with jealousy, I should have admired my wealthy peer for making the most of the privilege. His talent was quite remarkable. There was nothing to stop the rest of us learning to paint that well, but his background meant that he’d been encouraged, provided with time and equipment, while the rest of us had been told to shut up and do our homework. It wasn’t the money that mattered, but the life that went with it. The opportunity.

It was only when I discovered magick, and how magick could help me, that I tasted this type of privilege. I did not become wealthy overnight, and life remained a challenge, but I found that our fate is quite malleable. With magick, we can make change. There is no greater privilege than that.

With willpower and determination you can achieve many wonders, without ever using magick. A person with severe disabilities (either physical, financial or circumstantial) can make a better and more fulfilling life than somebody who is privileged and blind to their potential. But willpower and determination are not as important, or useful, as magick. Magick is the supernatural edge, the ultimate advantage that you can take to any situation. This is how you can thrive.

I can’t deny that fortune and circumstance play a big part in your life. A person born into wealth will have better financial skills, better contacts, and a greater vision, than somebody who is struggling with poverty – even if they both know magick. If you’re in a country, or area, that’s in financial turmoil, you’ll struggle more than somebody who’s living in a thriving economy. But magick can transcend circumstances more effectively than willpower, luck, fortune, fate, background, networks, connections or family. Even in the most hopeless circumstances, people with magick can do very well for themselves, and for the ones they love.

This is why I believe that if you discover magick, and find that magick works for you, it is your responsibility to live the best life that you can, enjoying what you can, sharing what you can, and developing in every way you can. This does not mean you need to be bound by outrageous ambition, but that you find peace within yourself, and from a place of peace and strength, find what you can be, what you can enjoy, who you can help, and then use magick to get the life that makes the most of who you are.

Ben Woodcroft