It’s really important that you understand what your motivations are for getting involved with magic. You might wander down to an occult conference where people introduce themselves with what they are but who says why they have chosen that path?:
“Hi I’m Gertrude I’m a …“
- “Witch”
- “Magician”
- “Thelemite”
- “Mystic”,
- “Psychic”
- “Medium”
- “Wiccan”
- “Golden Dawn initiate”
- “Sorcerer/ess”
- “Buddhist”
- “Necromancer”
- “Psychic Vampire”
- “Lightworker”
- “Otherkin”
- “Shaman”
- The list goes on… (more terms here)
The why goes much deeper into understanding the true self. Most people don’t know their true selves and getting to know them can be scary for them!
If we introduced ourselves by the why, what would that sound like? How would we say it?
- “I am religious because I need to know I’m on the side of the good-guys.”
- “I practice my path because I have a need to see myself progressing even when I’m in a dead-end job and can’t get out of a difficult relationship.”
- “I really want to understand and investigate the true nature of the universe and this seems like an excellent way to do it.”
- “I think the goddess is really beautiful and I feel happy when I am celebrating her.”
- “I’m a person who likes to feel in control and magic helps me to feel like that.”
- “I learn magic because I think there are scary forces in the universe someone needs to learn to keep back such forces. I guess I have to do it because I don’t see anyone else taking it seriously enough.”
- “I just want to get more out of life.”
- “Doing this stuff is fun.”
- “My practice allows me to escape from this hellscape for a while.”
- “I believe in spiritual stuff but my political agenda is too liberal for most major world religions.”
- “I continue to do these meditations because I think that I will ultimately end up happier.”
- “I don’t like people from the other major world religions. I think I can demonstrate that we can break free of major religions even if we still believe in stuff.”
- “Being pagan makes me more interesting.”
- “I’ve tried a bit of this stuff because it was cool and now I know it works and it’s real.”
Why should we get to understand our motivations in magic?
Frequently, I stand in a circle with people whose paths are very different from mine, but with whom I share a lot more in common than people working the same kind of magic as me. That’s because I want to get to the why of people. What are their motives? What is their philosophy? Equipped with this knowledge then we can work together much more easily.
Most people don’t look at why. It’s a toughie and if they did; if they were truly honest with themselves they might be quite surprised. Don’t worry if your why doesn’t sound very praise-worthy, if it’s true then well done for getting to the point of admitting it! Very few can admit it. I like to think of recognising our less praise-worth motivations as being a type of Shadow work where we embrace the parts of ourselves which are normally deemed lesser and mentally pushed away. Now at least, you can practice magic that is going to get you what you want, and focus on the stuff you want! Freeing your energy to work on your own Will. Denying yourself your desires will only lead you to get stuck. Even if you send your time pursuing less laudable motives, it will allow you to evolve beyond those base needs and come to truly understand them.
We get on well with people that we understand and when we do not understand people, it’s almost as if we grieve our differences! Have you ever fallen in love with someone only to find them to be very different from the person you thought you had met? When a couple breaks up, one of them might say, “x has just changed so much…” but the truth is most of the time they haven’t changed at all. Often when we meet someone we are exposed to only a small part of their personality and our brain has a horrid habit of filling in the blanks. Later we find out we were wrong about that blank that we filled in and then we grieve for that imaginary person who we think we’ve lost.
The same is true for our co-practitioners. We imagine them having the same motives as us and then grieve the loss of that imaginary person when we find out it’s not the case.
So many children and young adults have fallen in love with Link from Zelda, Edward from Twilight and Frodo Baggins. However, in many cases they’re meant to be a personality-blank-slate. For example, Edward, because his character is made almost entirely of love and primal hunger, they fill in the rest of the character to their own liking. When you ask fans what they like about the character, you often hear characteristics which are not evident in the series at all. They have filled in the blanks with what they liked to imagine Edward would be like rather than investigate who he really is!
We do the same with friends! Our magical partners are no exception to this, because of the closeness and understanding that we get from those friends. We like to imagine everyone as we wish they were, rather than who they really are. I’ve heard a person claiming that another member of their coven was incredibly selfless, while we both knew that person had tried to summon up goetic demons to acquire the love of a girl he liked, when he was younger. Also, he refused to talk about subjects he wasn’t interested in. Selfless is not the word I would use. We tend to fill in a lot of the blanks with what we like to imagine and ignore the stuff which is inconsistent.
Too often we grieve our differences; we are sad to acknowledge them. However, the truth is when we acknowledge our differences not only do we become better friends, but we also become much more useful to each other. I know that there are certain people who focus almost entirely on evocation magic because their aims are not transcendence and unity with the divine and, although I’m different in motives from them, I benefit a lot from their understanding of their chosen area. Some take a very psychological approach to magic and some do not, so I benefit a lot from working with both of these as I am trying to understand the universe and so, feel a need to battle out these different views in my head.
If we learn to accept ourselves including the parts of ourselves that we are less proud of, it is easier to accept those sides in other people. Also, if we learn to accept other people and their differences it is likewise easier to accept the divergent aspects of ourselves. Watch out for thinking “other people are allowed to think like that but not me” this is often a cognitive distortion.
People are incredible when we can identify their true motives and see where their motives overlap with our own. Two people can have completely separate motives, but both benefit from the same exercise and seeing where our true selves can allow us to work together is really important to our efficiency in working together with magic.
It’s very important not to judge people who have motivations which are different to ours, but that they recognise that we’re not all always searching for the same thing. I often have many people who give me tips for inner peace and happiness when I’m not searching for that, my greater focus is to understand the universe and sadly their advice would give me contentment and peace which could cost me all my impetus and passion. Because we do not match up in our motivations our practices are going to be very different. We could still learn from each other and there are a great number of practices that we could do together and both benefit, but some practices only lend to a few magic folk. Just because one practice is beneficial for you, does not mean it is for someone else.
When it comes to something as immense, unknown and complicated as magic, you need to understand the why before understanding what to do. Liber Resh vel Helios (a 4-part solar invocation written by Aleister Crowley) is a very useful ritual, but for someone whose practices involve calling upon moon deities and working exclusively with lunar energy, it is essentially useless. For them, it will feel uncomfortable because it is taking them in a different direction, attempts to root them in the sun will make their work harder because the sun and moon work on different orbits. The rituals energy feels very different from the energy they cultivate in their body.
I hear many people saying, “oh but the sun energy could balance out the moon energy.” Ask yourselves why that practitioner has been cultivating moon energy if she was just going to balance it out afterwards. “She should unite the sun and moon energy to transcend above it.” But what if she does not want to transcend? “But that’s the great work!” How do you know? Are you an omnipotent deity already? Who says that she’s trying to achieve what you think is “the Great Work”?
Often people choose to believe things because that makes them happy, but then to someone else whose intention is to believe in the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no matter how joyous or painful, the information is useless. It is not truth; only a belief that made someone else happy. For example, let’s imagine Norman the New Ager and Borris the Buddhist are having a conversation. Borris’ faith pushes him to consider uncomfortable truths like the reality of his own future death, in order to encourage his spiritual evolution and learning. Norman’s group prefer to be relaxed and seeks a form of contentment with everything that reality offers (instead of the Buddhist belief that reality is an illusion from which we must escape). If Norman says to Borris, “it is important in spiritual development to visualize the energy of happiness pouring into oneself and to not worry about the future” then an error has occurred. Norman has assumed that Borris wishes to become more pleased with his reality, rather than less attached to it. Norman’s advice is poor for Borris’ situation and does not consider his why. In failing to consider his why, it does not aid him in achieving his goals. On the other hand, Martha who is a Buddhist because she gets a lot from Mindfulness practices, really benefits from what Norman is suggesting because it aids her in achieving a calm from which to approach life. Although Martha might call herself a Buddhist she has little interest in Nirvana or escaping Samsara.
We often focus on how all the religions of the world are the same, but they can be different just as much as they might seem to be alike and often a philosophical mind that seeks to penetrate the thoughts of religious teachers from around the world will further understand religions differences as well as what those differences tell them about the universe.
Some religions encourage their devotees to enjoy reality Trinitarian Christianity, Hinduism, Taoism, etc. Some encourage their devotees to escape from this reality Gnostic Christianity, Neo-platonism, Buddhism, etc. Some suggest devotees should prepare for a place in Heaven while others suggest one go higher and transcend above even god himself. Some idealise asceticism, while others encourage socialization. By truly understanding the differences one can pursue different goals and understand the beauty of all the universe has to offer.
A Hindu practice might allow one to attain Krishna, a Christian practice might allow one into a heaven and a Buddhist practice may release one’s mind to Nirvana, but who says these different practices are all leading to the same thing? How do you know they are the same? Do you know someone who got into heaven going through Nirvana and met Krishna there? Perhaps they lead to different results and it is the goal of the initiate to understand his own path and seek its end wholeheartedly.
You might be in the same group as someone, and seem to be on the same path, but the reasons you’re on that path could be totally different and what you get from your practices or initiations could be totally different from what someone else gets from them. Recognising this, is the key to working well with other people. A key I have sadly neglected through much of my work with other groups and a key, that I now realise, is more important than any magical practice or group ritual. You cannot be efficient in participating in or running a group unless you know why your team wants to do the practices they want.
Understanding our motives allows us to be much more efficient in working together and much more efficient in working alone. Why do you think all these business advisers have their advisees set SMART goals? Because people are not honest with themselves about what their goals really are. And then, they are not efficient at pursuing them! You can’t achieve what you want, unless you know what you want in the first place. You might stumble across a £5 note if you were to walk for 10 days straight, but if you knew that you wanted money you could have just washed a neighbour’s car instead.
The same is true for magic. If you want enlightenment; if you want to know what that feels like, then practising a tradition that does not get you to work on it will not get you there. Alternatively, Buddhism and yoga offer a number of systems specifically organised to get people there or to some form of moksha or liberation. One really should understand how their spiritual practice meets their needs and even more importantly, they should understand how it falls short.
We live in an age where our globalisation allows us access to a wide plethora of spiritual practices where eclecticism is more possible than ever before and choosing practices from different paths which allows us to reach our goals, enables us to form the most unique and successful paths of any that came before us.
Identifying Motives in Others
This is an incomplete list and it is in no way perfect, but it provides are starting place to identify where others might be so you can begin the conversation about it.
Going forward, I will begin with what you might notice followed by an explanation of the likely motivations for such a practice.
Someone’s entire practice seems to revolve around summoning demons, they know the Goetia (Lemegeton) like the back of their hand – This is usually someone seeking a sense of personal power. Often they feel unfairly disempowered in their life and they want to compensate for that. Often people are made to feel ashamed about the search for power so this is good to address diagonally so they don’t get defensive. “Do you think that practising magick can make you more vulnerable to it and weaker?”
Someone wants every ritual to focus on the same goddess or god – This person could be in a number of places. Sometimes they feel comfortable with a certain deity and don’t want to step outside their comfort zone. Sadly this isn’t helpful to anyone. In some cases, they feel that there is something to learn from a certain deity that they haven’t yet. You can ask them about what there is to learn and challenge them to be more adventurous. “Should we be more adventurous and try a different deity or is there something we haven’t learned from working with X” When they are invariably told that there is more to learn, ask what is there to learn? If the person is vague then you can suggest that a completely new deity might be a novel situation with more to learn. Remember that some groups are literally set up for working invariably with a certain deity or within a certain paradigm and walking in and trying to change the constitution is essentially not being sensitive to why people are there.
Someone regularly says, “Since Chaos magic came around you don’t need to…” – This person seems to presume everyone is working from a Chaos magic paradigm and you might need to question that. They might need to realise that in a Hermetic group, a Thelemic group, a neopagan group or New Age group that not everyone is going to be working from the Chaos Magic paradigm. There are Chaos Magic groups out there which are dedicated to working from view. Try to talk to them about paradigm shift (can they shift into this groups’ paradigm?). If they don’t understand what paradigm shift is and how it works then realistically they don’t understand Chaos magic. This is horrifyingly common. This being the case they might just be bringing it up because dropping the Chaos magic line let’s them get away with breaking some rules. Those rules might be in place with that organisation for a reason. They might be part of that groups paradigm and why that group’s magic works.
Someone often posts us-v-them posts, virtue signalling posts and memes about being pagan or magic-practitioner. Although their online presence might be decorated in gothic iconography or pentagrams, they aren’t that bothered about doing ritual – Very often for some people being a practitioner of magic is more an identity than having a practice. This is okay if you’re just a neopagan. That term is more about believing in something than doing anything. But you can only be a witch if you practice witchcraft, you can only be a magician if you practice magick. Again a “wizard” literally derives from being a wise-one. If this is someone in your group and the rest of your group is more focused on practice then they’re pretty much going to suck up all the air and frustrate people.
Someone who always wants to turn the ritual on its head – This is fine and it’s great to experiment, but look at the purpose of the group. It is important to ask them “Are you trying to experiment or do you feel the ritual should reflect our individuality?” If the group is trying to re-create something like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn then artistic or experimental variation kind of defeats the point. A discussion should be had with the whole group about what variation is permissible. For example, if you were creating a temple focused on Thor, you might not want to sacrifice your animals in the modern-day and age. How else are you likely to deviate from the original means of worship? If you agree with a group then variation is permissible and good within a certain range. If someone wants to vary the group’s ritual further then they are likely experimenting and their experiments can be conducted by themselves, or you can support them and do their experiments just the two of you, but they can’t be allowed to seize an entire group to deviate from its purpose. If its about artistic expression for this person then I would immediately question why a group should need to focus on their individual artistic expression, if everyone was allowed the same artistic expression with the group ritual then there might be chaos and two people might want the same part of the ritual changed in different ways. Would this be helpful?
Someone who is overtly serious about the rituals or practice – I am often someone who takes things a little bit too seriously. This is most obvious when someone is being quite strict about ritual practice, maybe they are too focused on keeping to the script and they get angry if someone de-rails what they’re trying to do. The difficulty is that we are there for a reason, but that reason did not necessarily get completely de-railed if people did something different. It is often those who are very serious about rituals and practices who cause the biggest fall outs and the most drama. I think in my own experience with me, was that my autism made me see everything in black and white. If a ritual went a bit off script, I might see it as completely ruined. Israel Regard says in his Golden Dawn that mistakes are inevitable, but all you need to do is reverse a little bit and start from before the mistake was made and re-do. If this is a group where significant variation is allowed then you don’t even need to do this, you can encourage those who are too serious to see this are part of the flavour of this month’s ritual. I personally, feel that if it is someone’s initiation ritual, it should be done strictly to the script at least once unless part of that ritual initiation is about exploring lack of control and things not going to plan. If you’re struggling with someone who is taking it too seriously then you can play the Why game. Why are you upset? Why did his behaviour in the ritual ruin it for you? Why is that important in ritual for you? Is there another place where you can get the ritual experience you were looking for, like doing it alone at home for example.
Alternatively, someone is not serious enough and feels every ritual is a chance to be silly, make fun of the ritual and not stick to the script – This is often from someone who either likes being the centre of attention or doesn’t like it when people take rituals too seriously. They might recognise that those taking it too seriously are on ego trips and want to break away from that, but then take it too far. Okay firstly, as I mentioned above you could have an agreed amount of variation for the group which everyone has agreed to and you could discuss this with them. If you have done this already then you need to question whether their actions in ritual meet the agreed variation. Alternatively, you might need to remind them that this is everyone’s ritual space, not their own personal one. If everyone is coming together to do the ritual and they don’t play ball then they might have ruined the situation for other people who gave up their time to be there.
Someone who feels the need to tell us “It’s the end of the world.”, “the black lodge is attacking”, “the therians are turning into their alt self” – Okay this is often someone who takes things too seriously but is also lost in fantasy. I really feel like someone should experience a magic war for themselves just so they can see how it impacts people and the mindsets people go through. Often it is important to recognise Y2K happened the end of the world kept going, 2012 happened and we kept on going and there was the housing crash we survived that. We are adjusting to cost of living now and if we can’t get through it then we need to make further adjustments to society. I often hear my friend telling me how capitalism is this big bubble that’s going to suddenly pop and we will go to communism. Except, the rich seem to rule us, they have all these legal ways of bribing our politicians (like hiring them to speak at an event for £200,000, donating to their political party and controlling the media in their favour). Those rich people benefit from this capitalist bubble, so frankly if it starts leaking they’re just going to get a bit of cellotape and patch up the hole to keep going a society that benefits them. Sorry those of you hoping for a world collapse and suddenly witches and wizards having the ability to levitate cars… let’s get real. You can ask for evidence or where they are getting this information from but often it’s like trying to convince the dead to rise. You might be tempted to use this person for a greater sense of urgency and more strict adherence of ritual world and personal development, psychic wars are a great training ground for example, but in the end you’re on the looney train heading for disaster. Often the easiest way with these people is to repeatedly tell them to calm down, and since none of the other world-ending prophecies came true then this probably won’t either. They will soon get bored and leave.
I hope those are helpful for managing groups. Overall having a meeting every few years to determine initially the values of the people in the group, then their aims with the group to meet the values (the why), after agreeing that, you can choose was sort of group work and personal work is relevant to your aims. Then a group discussion of what variation is permitted based on the ritual work and personal work might meet the aims.
Conclusion
When you work with other Magical people you need to realise that their motivations are often not the same as yours and then avoid giving advice unless you have some idea what a person’s intentions are. Spend a good amount of time allowing people to give their reasons for their path and craft group rituals which your attendees want, rituals that they won’t just enjoy but will also push them to work towards their goals.
Choose spiritual practices that benefit most of the group and then you can deal with beneficial practices for others. Be eclectic! Bring together all the tools you need but understand the why behind them. Love people, no matter how base their motivations may seem because we are all unique and if you understand why a person follows their path then you are getting to know their true-self and it’s an honour to be allowed that close to someone!