Magic calls to the powerless with promises of power, but most who hear its call want to be powerful and not to build power. – Me 2019
I’m sorry if this offends people. It will likely do that. It is my opinion; just that. These are my feelings and yes I do present them like facts to me they seem to be facts. You don’t have to agree, but listening (or in this
Too many people are claiming levels of spiritual development that they do not possess. I have often expressed my frustration with how many people think they’re the
When working with magick you should ask yourself some questions. Do I want to feel powerful, do I want other people to think I am powerful or do I actually want to develop power for real? Which of these three things would you prefer? This is important because it informs the type of spiritual practice you should do and where you should find yourself in the magickal community.
Feeling Powerful
If you wish to feel powerful then you can visualise yourself as a powerful sorceress/sorcerer. You can imagine that drawing a random sigil can create change in conformity with your will and you might even notice that belief occasionally brings you what you wish, albeit rarely. In reality you’re not using your true potential. Sadly there are all too many people doing this. This is no different from your Grandma yelling at the TV because somewhere in her mind she believes it can make a difference to what is being broadcast.
This visualisation enables a form of self-delusion, which could be a therapeutic escape from difficulties in your life. It might even provide you with enough relief from reality to actually go back to the difficulties in your life with more confidence and calmness. In doing so you might find that you’re better able to deal with them. However when this fantasy is lived as a lifestyle it can be quite dangerous.
Often such “magickal” people are so consumed with their own fantasies of magick that they fail to do the basic housework, as if they expect a group of pixies will be turned to their will and wash the dishes and do laundry. Often so consumed by the persona that they wish to present to the world, that they are unable to truly be honest with others and care for another person in a way conducive to a healthy relationship. So they are either perpetually single or in and out of dysfunctional relationships. Not to mention their delusion is not desired by anyone else that chooses to live in the real world.
They don’t worry about employment saying “the universe will provide” when the universe has provided them an unfairly large spectrum of employment opportunities, opportunities that it doesn’t offer everyone. Too often those opportunities have been ungratefully refused in favour of the fantasy of a career as a shaman. A career for which the only realistic clients are about to declare themselves shamans and cease needing the services anyway.
The end result of so much self delusion is someone who cannot seem to succeed in anything in life. Rather than try to overcome the difficulties in their life they chose to pretend those difficulties didn’t exist. Instead of learning to deal the hand that life dealt with them they chose to imagine they were playing a different game. Sadly the croupier is still going to rake your chips away. Let’s be realistic please.
Seriously who is going to respect and cower in fear of the great and powerful Shaman Sorcerer Dark Raven McDragon-Born? A “sorcerer” who doesn’t have the energy to get out of bed in the morning never mind heal people, who mutilates goats for very little reason. Who’s only romantic relationship was a dysfunctional one with Witch Queen Indigo Phoenix of Narnia. Neither of which can conjure enough money to pay the rent and whose benefits are spent on a nice looking crystal rather than a nutritious meal for their children. It’s okay that crystal will instantly turn them all enlightened so they don’t need their bodies to be well fed anyway.
In the end these two are happy people living a fantasy in their heads. Who am I to take this away from them?
I find them to be an embarrassment for the community. I remember when I was younger and two people who ran a wizarding and witchcraft school for children, had taken it upon themselves to surgically alter the flesh that grows a horn on a baby goat’s head so that it grew a single horn rather than two and they could call it a unicorn. If someone that deeply involved in the pagan community had to jump to such drastic actions to bring about something magical it made me very concerned that there would be nothing paganism could offer me. I felt there must be nothing magical after hearing about this. Boy, was I wrong.
Sadly, embarrassment is not where it ends. The delusion brings relief from some of the pain in their life, but they can often see through the cracks in their own delusion plunging them back into the pain they tried to escape from. They then seek to find something to validate the fantasy to which they have become attached. This is too often done by obtaining followers.
Obtaining followers often involves lying and claiming more spiritual grades than ever before. It can involve loud proclamations of judgement on other leaders, in attempt to raise one’s own standing. Should I point out that some of those other people that they disregarded are illuminated beings, whose reputation got slandered by self-deluder? and pretending to be psychologically perfected. This psychological facade is well known by Buddhists and psychologists to cause the negative traits repressed by the facade to manifest in destructive ways: magickal declarations of war, group schisms and internationally notorious break ups. Suddenly these are the people tasked with leading others to achieve a spiritual growth that was never achieved before. A person without a map leading others a long unknown terrain. The blind leading the blind.
You do not need a teacher or leader to show you how to fantasize. It comes very naturally. So I wish these people would stop trying to lead others to an enlightenment that never comes. It embarrasses all of us and turns people away who might have something to benefit here.
I have fantasized about many things in my life. At the end of the fantasy, I found myself more attached to something I had never had in the first place. This was not helpful. It just took me longer to face the truths of not having what I had fantasized about and without facing that I didn’t have it I could not truly begin to build towards having it. Without knowing you are running out of water, you will not brave the journey to the well. If you convince yourself you have successfully reached the end of a journey you will never make the first step.
So I will conclude that this is a dangerous, self destructive and false path which never leads to where it promises. If you sense even for a second you might be on this path, you can stay there but I recommend you leave what you are doing. The most productive thing for you to do would be to have a spiritual clean out. Reduce your practices down to one simple thing and drop all the colourful decorations and face the pain that you are experiencing do not hide from it.
This is the major difference. I notice my close friends use magick to force them to face the troubles in the world and their lives rather than to escape from them. We often ritually face them, which can be fun and beautiful, but that’s not entirely necessary. Just accepting the truth is enough to affect huge transformation. Let’s look at the effects of Buddhism. Buddhism turns out a large number of people whose lives have been changed for the better and people with significant psychological advancement because Buddhism first makes people think about and face the fact that they are going to die. This is also true of the Elusian mysteries and any death related pagan ritual. Make all initiates face the one thing nearly everyone is afraid of: their own death.
If you get some relief out of playing the magickal shaman or whatever, then LARPing is a great way to do this. You would be in an agreed environment where everyone is playing a role. You can live it out to its fullest. You don’t stay in this role and you are soon required to return to the real world and take care of bread winning and your own health. Some people however still get so lost in the fantasy LARPing that you see similar traits to those of other self-deluders so watch out for this.
Other people’s respect
If you decided you cared the most about people thinking of you as powerful then you are in a difficult boat. You can go the way of the previous example… the self-deluder and if you are lucky then you might obtain a couple of followers, but frankly most people will see right through you. Most of those groups are short lived. They sadly give licence for 10 others to develop. Any followers will speak to someone with sense and you’d be very lucky if they survive that. There are so many people that have already walked that path and anyone who has been a part of the occult / magickal scene has seen it 100 times.
Alternatively you could try actually advancing magickally and develop the very thing that you wish other people to think you have. This is not the easy path but frankly somewhere along the line you will get to a point where you respect yourself so much that you don’t need other people’s approval.
If you decided to go the route of spiritually advancing then, your motivation may get in the way of doing so but in the beginning it could be a help. In any spiritual path which culminates in the practitioner having to relieve themselves of their ego, the building of a better person to build the reputation is just going to build the ego more and more so the practitioner is going to have a hard time actually finishing the path. It can help motivate them to start the path, but too quickly is the practitioner drawn to boast about their spiritual development often losing the motivation to do it and sometimes undoing the work.
Self Development
Finally, if you goal is simply to advance spiritually then there are a few pieces of advice I have for you.
1. Picking a path.
There are thousands of people ready to lead many others and I would say that in paganism all of them are some where on the spectrum of self-deluder and guru and way too many of them are closer to the self-deluder end. So how do we avoid this?
On a spiritual path it is quite important that the practice has a philosophy that makes sense and it is trying to get you somewhere. Ideally to know that a spiritual practice is genuine it should have a good amount of philosophy or writing associated with it about how it is designed to work.
A lot of people say all spiritual practices are leading to the same place. This is bogus. It is as true as all roads lead to Rome. The road I live on leads from the soulless suburbia surrounding London to more soulless suburbia surrounding London around 300 yards away from where it started and at no point bends to even face Rome. Often a spiritual practice IS a form of transport. It is designed to help someone get from A to B, normally mentally. Buddhism is designed to allow a person to stop engaging with Samsara at all, so they can avoid reincarnating and become enlightened. In Daoism many of the teachers try to get people to engage with reality in a way that fits neatly with the ebb and flow of the universe and care for the universe’s natural balance. This is why these two very different practices can be taken up in one person. Christianity seeks to fulfil a contract with God, known as a covenant, for a place in the after life. This covenant is exclusively for followers of that one deity. Hare-Krishna followers seek to bring about “Krisha consciousness” in all beings which brings joy to the world, but wouldn’t stop reincarnation and cause its practitioners to leave the wheel of Samsara. So these very different practices have very different aims and take their practitioners to different places. Anyone who says they are all doing the same thing are avoiding actually reading into them and only giving them a very superficial look that hardly regards what they intend to achieve.
Often in pagan and occult circles the mysterious nature of secret initiations which are taken from Freemasonry mean that a potential initiate is not privy to that information. If the leader of such a group cannot tell you what it will do for you then I question whether they really know themselves, but perhaps they do. Is it possible they are yet another example of the blind leading the blind? You can also ask their followers. What are you getting out of this? Often people who are not leading will not have an answer for this ready, but if you give them some time to come up with an answer and allow them to not actually say anything that is initiation specific than people on a truly powerful path will have a lot to say. Frequently it seems to begin with this is how I blew my life up. If they’re only view is it makes you a powerful magician then leave. I am pretty sure their initiations or work have no content or worth.
I found a lot of material for me in Aleister Crowley’s A.’. A.’. material. This is definitely not for everyone, but it is often disregarded without people actually looking into it at all. There are strange texts that make no sense, which were written by people in states of ecstasy, which suddenly make sense when you reach the very same state of mind. This gives a person a clear map to measure themselves against. Suddenly the text makes so much more sense than it ever did before and you know you have reached that state of mind. When you read some of the texts you see things in the world you never saw before, they affect you and bring you realisation. There are many huge repositories of philosophy. People questioning things and pondering the groups philosophy. “How do I reach this state of mind?” you read short text Liber E and do the practices. Often the answer is sit and meditate, which sounds boring so people don’t do that and wonder why they haven’t advanced.
Avoid anyone who claims a monopoly on spiritual advancement. Like I said there are many roads, yeah they don’t all lead to the same place, but some times to can get to the same place through a different route. If someone says there is only one way to develop spiritually, this instantly sends up huge red flags for me. I immediately get concerned that this person might be a control freak in desperate need of followers. Run. Quick. Head for the hills! This person will not help you.
There are enough people offering spiritual progression for reasonable rates. They might need to rent a hall to teach in and frankly they should be compensated for that and for their time too. But, if they are raking in some serious profit out of leading others then I wonder whether they are motivated by seeing others grow or seeing their bank account grow. If a person is more interested in money then they actually have a vested interested to keep you from reaching your goals so you continue paying an extortionate tuition fee or whatever it is called. I remember someone saying 5 is a powerful initiating number so I charge $555… I sat there wondering why the delusional cow didn’t charge $5 then or even $25 (5*5).
While I’m on the same person, whom I won’t name, I will ask “Does the spiritual practice recognise that pain and bad things is a part of spiritual progress?” If not, then they’re not embracing the whole of reality and living in yet another delusion. Avoid them. Pain is part of the process. To ignore it is to live in a deluded fantasy which frankly you should not have time for. There’s a reason that an initiation is often referred to as a crucible or an ordeal.
Often a Shaolin trainee is asked to wear heavy lead boots to train in. As he practices performing jumps and kicks he develops powerful muscles to lift the weight of the boots. When the boots are removed his jumps are almost like flying. Good initiation works like this. It teaches the student to bare powerful spiritual loads and this hardship is a development of spiritual muscles.
There are many paths. Pick a path stick to it and choose wisely. By all means carve your own path, but you need to stick to it which is much harder when you don’t have people around you also doing the same work.
2. Enjoy the process
Often an ambitious person (or at least me) will decide he will start and complete on this path as quickly as possible and if that is the case he might overcommit. I’m going to meditate every day for 2 hours and 5 hours on weekends. Like seriously who actually has that much time? They then berate themselves when they don’t do it. They must continually verbally punish themselves. The spiritual practice become a rod to self-flagellate in a way that is neither healthy or productive.
Find a way to do your spiritual practice regularly which is just enough that leaves you wanting to do it more. Never over do it. If you are bored and frustrated for the last hour of a meditation or ritual then you’re making what should be pleasurable experience in to a painful one and frankly it won’t last. Do what you enjoy and build slowly from there. If you don’t like it cut back, but make sure you are always growing. Don’t measure yourself too much, just to make sure you are actually growing or whether you need to review your practices. If you measure yourself too much you’re just making yet another rod to beat yourself with. “I didn’t do my 20 minute dream induction tonight… damn I’m a bad dream-walker and poorly devoted.” These thoughts will haunt you for ages until they become your truth. Don’t give them a chance to arise. Do enough that you grow, but enjoy the process. Leave yourself begging for more.
I remember when I was young and attended a Christian Church the pastor once spoke about people who wished they could get fit but didn’t. He noted quite cleverly that they didn’t want to “get fit” they wanted to already “be fit”. There is a distinct difference here between the two. One is a focus on the process of development / growth and the other focuses on the result of years of this practice.
Have a spiritual practice you enjoy. Yes face the pain and discomfort as well and don’t be afraid of times when the practice is difficult, but at least in the beginning do it in a way that you enjoy.
Conclusion
If you want to self-delude, by all means go ahead, but be aware of the pit falls. DO NOT lead other people down this path with silly promises. It won’t work and if you embarrass me by association, I might actually curse you for it, anything to stop the delusion and lie from spreading.
If you want to gain respect from other. Develop yourself. This is the only way to genuine do it, but drop the need for other people’s respect. Respect yourself enough that you don’t need it.
If you want to develop yourself spiritually. Listen to testimonies of people further ahead of you on the path you are on. Is that really where you want to be?
Avoid:
- People deluding themselves
- People oppressing their own negativity and avoiding it in the world
- People charging an arm and a leg
- People claiming their way is the only way
- People unable to tell you actually where their path leads (these are often self-deluders)
- Take up a practice you enjoy. Love the process and continue the process when it gets difficult.
Charge of the Me
Let’s change the face of paganism and occultism today.