1: "Improper" or "EXACT" expectations -

People think magick is a vending machine that grants wishes, that you put in a spell working and you get out an outcome. Instead, magick is much less rational than that. It is chaotic, it is fluid, magick is more like a force of influence, and that influence doesn't (normally) give you what you specify, so much as it gives you what you specifically need. In other words, to borrow from Crowley, Magick follows our true will. Not the will of our ego avatar.



Example - You hate a co-worker who makes your job hell! You hate them more than anyone has ever hated anyone in their lives. You want them DEAD. So you stow decided to use some death magick and hurl a death curse at them with a one-month time limit for manifestation. You pour your heart and soul into it to the point where you aren't even mad anymore. You close the ritual, feeling cathartic and walk away, not dwelling on it, letting the magick do its thing. In other words, you did everything right.



Result - nobody dies, but 2 weeks after working the spell, on a Friday, the person you hate is emptying out their desk with a big smile on their face, they got a last minute promotion because someone in another office got fired, and so the person you hate is getting a raise, and are moving to a bigger better office 2 states over, you will never see them, and they will never interact with you again for as long as you live.



A blind fool or skeptic would consider that a "failed" spell. (And I once was such a blind fool.)



While I would NOW consider that a rip-roaring success. (And now I am just a crazy fool)



If I was that Sorcerer, I would realize that I ended up getting what I really wanted, peace. space, distance, and an end to the relationship. I said "Death" because I was being vain, and selfish and vindictive. But my true will wasn't for them to die, it was for them to leave me alone!



You could even rationalize that in a manner of speaking they ARE dead, DEAD TO YOU!



This is a big reason why some level of divination should be done before certain magick working. Even if you don't believe in Tarot or Scrying, it can help you to make better, more honest decisions, or inspire you to think about things in a way you might not have done before. You might figure out how you truly feel, and then make your magick more aligned with your true will.

Also - People don't leave their spells enough room to accomplish their true will, they don't do any divination and they are too specific, too demanding, too needy for magick to be like a machine that grants wishes. The best magick is somewhere between asking magick to do what it wants, and asking for it to do what you want.



Say you need 546$ to pay off the rent before the end of the month.



You could cast a spell for 546, or 600$ or some other number. And never get it. Or maybe only get 230$ or 5$.



But if you cast the spell so that the spell is really aimed at making sure the rent is paid or the landlord gives you an extension without any problems, without being specific about how much money or what path the magick has to take... NOW you are casting a spell that has room to breathe. Now you might get 600$ worth of free car repairs from your daughter's new boyfriend as they try to kiss your ass so you let them go away for the weekend etc. Thus, saving you the money.



Or maybe you will get the rent extension, or maybe you will pull some overtime and make rent just in time.



Either way Spell = success!





2: People have "unrealistic" expectations of what magick can do - Another reason dealing with expectation - Now you need to know, I do experiment with magick, and part of experimentation is failure. But I do not consider experimentations to be a "success/Fail" binary situations. The experiment might fail, but my magick didn't. Most of my magick experiments are trying to learn something new, or find the limits of magick as I understand it.



For example, if you asked a sniper to hit a moving satellite in orbit, does that mean his shooting skills or his rifle or his aim failed if he can't hit it?



No... It means the task wasn't rationally possible.



This was, in fact, the NUMBER 1 reason my magick began to fail me, and why I fell more and more away from magick becoming a skeptic as a result. The more I tried to do the impossible the more impossible magick began to be.



Even spells I knew worked, stopped working, it was luck being on a lucky winning streak and suddenly the law of averages caught up to me, and nothing worked, and I mean nothing.



It was like I was cut off...



Part of that is because my belief in my ability and the nature of magick itself was rent asunder.



I lost my mojo, and my confidence and my way.



So what is realistic and reasonable? Well, ask 9 mages, get 18457 answers. Everyone has stories everyone has those tales that just sound like the person is telling you some bullshit to sound interesting.



So I can't tell you exactly. But I will tell you this.



REAL magick works follow the path of LEAST rational resistance.



That means, the fewer miracles it has to perform to do what it does, the more likely it is to work that way.



Real Magick is not Fireballs, it's not people flying like Superman. It's not demons appearing in your closet to steal your children's souls and it's not the force.



Real Magick is swamp gas that looks like a ufo.



Real Magick is spooky coincidences.



Real Magick is dreams that come true.



Real Magick is that bump in the night caused by the neighborhood cat.



Real Magick is always at the exact right place, at the exact right time, to have the experience of magick.



Real Magick is that voice you hear in the back of your mind before I do something stupid telling you not to.



Real Magick is that Tarot spread that is just so accurate it's spooky.



Real Magick is Subtle.



Real Magick is mostly in your head and can be mistaken for imagination.



Real Magick is things going missing or turning up.



Real Magick is missing time/lost time.



Real Magick is almost dying, but somehow not despite the odds.



Real Magick is invisible to skeptics.



Real Magick is EASILY explained away as something NOT magickal.



- Every time.



Except when it isn't ;) (all rules need exceptions)



My point here is, magick CAN do almost anything, but it almost never does it in those impossible ways. It uses rational scientifically plausible means.



Casting a spell for 100$ is almost never, or at least to my knowledge has never, Resulted in a 100$ bill appearing out of thin air into the hand of the Sorcerer. I won't say it CAN'T do that, because even science says it's technically possible (just really really really unlikely - See Boltzmann brains).



The number of times I have seen magick manifest in a miraculous obvious way, could be counted on 1 hand. IE poltergeist activity, Seeing fire take the shape of a being and hold it, hearing strange sounds (like a crow call at midnight) just as the ritual was asking for a sign of the spirit to manifest). and seeing shadows with a group seeing the same things and stuff like that.



This is another reason why some kind of divination can be helpful. Divination is more likely to give you solutions to problems and concerns that are rationally possible for magick to deal with.



3: A lack of understanding of the holistic nature of magick.

To me, this is a pet peeve. I watch a lot of sorcerers do their thing on youtube or other contexts, and I want to reach through my monitor or whatever and throttle them...



Magick is not a collection of strange words, poetry, black candles and funny shaped called sigils or circles or whatever.



Nor is it a purely imaginary thing you do all in your mind's eye.



Nor is it purely a thing done on the astral level.



Magick, real magick, is a holistic activity, it is literally a Yoga, it is a union of all that is, a practice of mind, body, and soul moving as one. Indeed, if I didn't prefer the aesthetic sound and imagery of the word magick better, I think the term Yoga is more accurate to what really goes on when someone does magick.



This could be a blog post on magick cosmology all it's own, but let me simplify it. I know some will disagree here, and say this is JUST my opinion... But really, I don't give a shit if you agree or not, my magick works, 100% of the time, if your's does too, then write your own blog about it.



True magick done right is union of the mind, body, and soul where -



The Soul is the spirit, the truth, the inspiration, the nameless emptiness of totality, it is pure potentiality, it is an idea without the judgment of ideal. It is pure chaos. It sings and it sighs, it blows and bellows. it ebs and it flows, it is gradients and contraction, it is paradox and impossibility.



The body is the hard formless reality all around us. It is a perfect mirror of the soul in terms of its characteristics, it is objective and firm. It is mechanical, predictable, and ordered, despite having no form. It ticks and it tocks, it is time and tide.



Mind is the thing that gives meaning and form to the formless substance of the world, and substance to the substanceless form of the soul. The mind is the judge, the decider, the ideal, the pattern recognition machine that takes the chaotic rorschache ink blot of totality and creates ordered forms, faces, ideals, angels and demons.



These are not separate things. They are in act ONE thing with 3 extremes.



The Material world is what we perceive, and is it based almost entirely on the body, and the mind. With only a hint of the Soul giving mind inspiration and ideas about how to idealize and define. The mind defines what it sees, limiting it, and making it a thing where before it was a No-thing.



A table does not exist as a table until is evoked out of the solid body of reality by a mind who decides it has the quality of a table. Before that it is formless. It exists, but it has no meaning. you can still put a cup on it, but it is only a table when something decides it is a table.



The Astral World is what we perceive in our mind's eye, in the astral state. Astral Projection is just a projection of our mind and it's ability to judge, into this extreme of the soul. It feels external, like another world overlayed upon the real world, but it is, in fact, an internal world, not to be confused with the word INSIDE, which means to be contained by something. I use internally to mean self, and within this self is everything.



In the astral world, we have conscious control over everything, much like we do in the material world, but unlike the material world, there are no rules here, you can make a table into a hat, or make it vanish completely, and it will do exactly that. But it is here that the true essence of what is a table is in fact found. As the spirit is the source of the idea of a table, and the mind is the judge of what IS an ideal table.



True reality is an emergent phenomenon of all three of these things working as one.



You are a consciousness that is contained within the biology of life, focused on a brain, a brain that exists inside a universe, a universe that is an idea that comes from the soul, a universe that only exists within the consciousness of the mind that can perceive the idea of the universe as different from the soul. Each thing creates the other. Each is the other...



The Oroborus...



Magick/Yoga/Elevated Consciousness is what we get when all three of these elementary extremes are blended and whole, without imbalance.



To do magick effectively, you need to bring all three of these extremes into equal focus and make them all move as one toward the thing that you are consciously trying to do.



You do magick all the time technically, but to do it intentionally, that is the trick, that is what the spells are for, and some would argue that all the spells are doing is aligning to you the true nature of your will, not actually making anything happen.



But if all you are doing is saying a few words without feeling, without visualizing, without doing something physical, without uniting all 3 extremes... you are not doing magick intentionally... Your magick sucks and fails and sputters, and frustration follows.



When all these 3 things are aligned, THEN there is no such thing as failed magick, magick will always work, it may not work exactly the way your ego predicts or desires, but it will work, every single time.



At that point, it is easy to let go of your attachment to the results of your spells, or any other working.



You will just know that you are empowered, and ascending, even if it doesn't always feel like it.



MIND THE SHADOWS - D.H. THORNE



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Magick, real magick, is a holistic activity, it is literally a Yoga, it is a union of all that is, a practice of mind, body, and soul moving as one. Indeed, if I didn't prefer the aesthetic sound and imagery of the word magick better, I think the term Yoga is more accurate to what really goes on when someone does magick.True magick done right is union of the mind, body, and soul where -The Soul is the spirit, the truth, the inspiration, the nameless emptiness of totality, it is pure potentiality, it is an idea without the judgment of ideal. It is pure chaos. It sings and it sighs, it blows and bellows. it ebs and it flows, it is gradients and contraction, it is paradox and impossibility.The body is the hard formless reality all around us. It is a perfect mirror of the soul in terms of its characteristics, it is objective and firm. It is mechanical, predictable, and ordered, despite having no form. It ticks and it tocks, it is time and tide.Mind is the thing that gives meaning and form to the formless substance of the world, and substance to the substanceless form of the soul. The mind is the judge, the decider, the ideal, the pattern recognition machine that takes the chaotic rorschache ink blot of totality and creates ordered forms, faces, ideals, angels and demons.These are not separate things. They are in act ONE thing with 3 extremes.The Material world is what we perceive, and is it based almost entirely on the body, and the mind. With only a hint of the Soul giving mind inspiration and ideas about how to idealize and define. The mind defines what it sees, limiting it, and making it a thing where before it was a No-thing.A table does not exist as a table until is evoked out of the solid body of reality by a mind who decides it has the quality of a table. Before that it is formless. It exists, but it has no meaning. you can still put a cup on it, but it is only a table when something decides it is a table.The Astral World is what we perceive in our mind's eye, in the astral state. Astral Projection is just a projection of our mind and it's ability to judge, into this extreme of the soul. It feels external, like another world overlayed upon the real world, but it is, in fact, an internal world, not to be confused with the word INSIDE, which means to be contained by something. I use internally to mean self, and within this self is everything.In the astral world, we have conscious control over everything, much like we do in the material world, but unlike the material world, there are no rules here, you can make a table into a hat, or make it vanish completely, and it will do exactly that. But it is here that the true essence of what is a table is in fact found. As the spirit is the source of the idea of a table, and the mind is the judge of what IS an ideal table.True reality is an emergent phenomenon of all three of these things working as one.You are a consciousness that is contained within the biology of life, focused on a brain, a brain that exists inside a universe, a universe that is an idea that comes from the soul, a universe that only exists within the consciousness of the mind that can perceive the idea of the universe as different from the soul. Each thing creates the other. Each is the other...Magick/Yoga/Elevated Consciousness is what we get when all three of these elementary extremes are blended and whole, without imbalance.To do magick effectively, you need to bring all three of these extremes into equal focus and make them all move as one toward the thing that you are consciously trying to do.You do magick all the time technically, but to do it intentionally, that is the trick, that is what the spells are for, and some would argue that all the spells are doing is aligning to you the true nature of your will, not actually making anything happen.But if all you are doing is saying a few words without feeling, without visualizing, without doing something physical, without uniting all 3 extremes... you are not doing magick intentionally... Your magick sucks and fails and sputters, and frustration follows.When all these 3 things are aligned, THEN there is no such thing as failed magick, magick will always work, it may not work exactly the way your ego predicts or desires, but it will work, every single time.At that point, it is easy to let go of your attachment to the results of your spells, or any other working.You will just know that you are empowered, and ascending, even if it doesn't always feel like it.

As of my Reawakening to magick, all my workings have a 100% success rate. I can't remember the last time a spell I truly put effort into failed. When I DID fail at magick it was before I really understood what magick was. Oh, I knew the procedure, and I knew the mystical nature of it. But I had certain misconceptions, partly due to pop cultures (mis)representation of magick, giving me the wrong expectations.In the end, this is a big part of why I became a skeptic... after years of experiences that I could not deny, I eventually decided it was all just some kind of self-delusion brought on by my desperate need to overcome the insurmountable issues of my childhood and my own character flaws.Like many who become interested in magick I sought it, and the demons and shadows I communed with because it made me feel powerful. It gave me a sense of control and made me feel like more than just some guy from the wrong side of the tracks who could barely hold a job.But at some point, I began to fail, after talking to demons and shadow beings, sometimes daily, for years, I broke down. I began to see less and less success... and between that and other things changing in my life, I walked away.Trust me when I tell you this, I am not at all regretful, in all those years I became a STRONG person, I became self aware in ways most people are not, I became a mystic and focused on enough material things that I was able to at least understand myself and no longer have these hang-ups that I had going into magick the first time.Magick for me now is no longer about coping with a shitty life... it is now part of my expression of how awesome my life is!But at the same time, I do think I wasted several years of time I could have spent mastering the basics others know all about that I don't.I know intuitively and from past experience being taught by demons and trial and error what others need books to tell them. As I often say, I am not bragging, this is confirmed time and time and time again.Anyway, Let me cut to the chase of why I failed and why most others fail, even if only sometimes.There are many reasons why people don't have such a success rate as I have now. But let me limit it to just 3.So without any more distraction - Here are the 3 biggest reasons I used to suck at Magick and why you might too.