A good amount of magical learning needs to be actual practice rather than information. Every magical practitioner has their own unique way of developing this skill so don’t be afraid to modify how you do it. Whatever you do it needs to fit into your lifestyle. We all know the odd Witch or Magician who only practices at group rituals and does next to nothing in their own personal practice. I could name names, but you probably have your own list. I think of this like trying to be on a football team, but never doing any training, it would be like letting your team down and exposing yourself to potential injury. I mean I would do, if I cared at all about football at all, but that’s another story for another time. I actually hate working out, so I don’t pick this metaphor lightly. It just fits so well. Like working out, there is not one way to do it. It is however important that you meet certain goals. Many muscle builder develop giant biceps, but when they pick up a heavy box they hurt themselves because they missed whole areas. Some exercises can train multiple areas and some goals can be trained with a variety of exercises. The important thing is to cover these basic goals with your magical muscle training:
- Willpower
- Concentration and Meditation
- Energy capacity
- Channelling Power into Words
- Helpful mental states and balanced psychology
As time goes on I hope to develop a full section on how to work on all these skills and provide a decent training program, but for now, it is up to the practitioner to make sure their regular practices meet all these goals. You don’t have to do my training scheme at all to be a valid practitioner, but I hope this page will provide a means through which someone can avoid any gaps in their own training. Eventually, I hope for a practitioner to have a full training programme here that they can rely on to practice without gaps. Let’s be totally honest and say that because of my busy social life, working 3 jobs and teaching a coven it will be a long time before I have a full training set down.
Will Power
It should be obvious why Will Power is needed. You can’t do anything without willpower. I know many so-called “magical practitioners”, who barely have the willpower to get up in the morning. I often question what is their capacity to do magic at all if they have so little willpower and they’re doing nothing to improve it. Willpower needs to be strengthened through exercises and through life.
Without Willpower a magical practitioner cannot manipulate dream states. This means a simple visualisation-based spell can hardly be done. Also, with poor willpower any movement of energy will be weak and ineffective. An initiate would also lack the perseverance to get anything done.
Will power can be strengthened by energy work, focus concentrated ritual and meditation. Also in life willpower can be strengthened by pushing oneself at most opportunities. Magic is often intertwined with life and Willpower is our driving force to achieve stuff in life. If you can convert your life into an opportunity to strengthen Will then you will have a powerful driving force to develop you. Your every day will be a magic muscle workout.
Concentration and Meditation
Concentration and meditation also form an important area of training. By practicing meditation you train your brain to keep concentrating rather than continually waver. To quote one of my favourite Buddhist teachers unwanted thoughts are like guests in your home. If they show up unannounced and you spend time entertaining them then they will come back, however, if you ignore them eventually they will stop showing up uninvited. When doing a spell it is so important that all thoughts are entirely about the end you wish to achieve. When an unwanted thought comes about, it is often said that this could interfere with your desired results. So it is important that the initiate knows how to concentrate on one thing.
Also, the mysticism of Buddhists is entirely dependent upon the states of meditation and trance achieved by them. By meditating the initiate becomes familiar with all the different states of mind and begins to see through the various veils of reality as the Buddha did.
Working on both Meditation and Concentration is often achieved by working through Dharana and the various Jhanas (or Dhyanas). Alternatively, when living one’s life, focusing hard on everything you are doing and practising not being distracted develops skills with concentration, which help with meditation as well. Often when I have spoken to younger practitioners they often struggle to concentrate. I wonder if Twitter’s 280-character limit has meant that most reading that the younger generation has done has required little concentration. Also, the continual gratification of social media has made most of us hooked on dopamine. I am a particular victim of this, since I was playing video games from the age of 5 and have been using social media since 2007. Since the concentration required for Magic does not provide the necessary dopamine, it is often harder for people so accustomed to dopamine to do the concentration necessary for good practice. In fact, often when I draw people who struggle with concentration to the importance of it and meditation, many of them either give up on magic altogether or choose instead to listen to someone who gratifies and flatters them better. Be careful with this. As much as Crowley said “the law is for all”, in my opinion, magic is not and people who turn away at the first sign of difficulty will never get far in magic. The one thing I have discovered is that dopamine addicts, like me, can do is to pay attention to the feeling they get when they are doing something that provides a lot of dopamine. This allows them to tap into their brain’s production of chemicals. By recreating the feeling they get with dopamine they can short-cut the process and generate the dopamine at will. However, this could just further the addiction so be careful.
Mastering the Core Techniques of the BuddhaEnergy Capacity
The dominant paradigm of magic works by manipulating the flow of natural energies. Perhaps outside of theory, magic might work differently, but this paradigm has always fit for me. The problem is the body can only allow for so much energy to flow at once. The subtle body is like biological wires for the flow of energy. As it flows more and more energy over time, if the increase is subtle enough then the body can adjust however if it tries to carry too much energy then it can go capput and damage itself.
Without having the capacity for lots of energy to flow the body has limited spiritual power and spiritual control. Any spells will be weak, short lived and might not even reach their target. By developing the governing vessel, the conception vessel and filling the dan tians the body is capable of channelling more and more energy and has plenty of energy in it until it can actually do things. An excess of energy has a tendency to unbalance the individual unless it can be grounded. So building the capacity to ground is very important. Also weak energy can lead to weak protections to ritual is not as safe as it could be. Finally, in order for the subtle body to rise on the planes the energy body needs to be developed or whatever is projected will dissipate before it can go anywhere.
Energy capacity can be developed by regularly using energy to heal oneself and others. Regularly grounding oneself to maintain balance throughout the day. Doing chakra meditations or qi-gong are the best exercises for developing this capacity. Throughout life grounding yourself while you’re in a state of anxiety is VERY helpful. The anxiety provides good resistance to grounding, so it is harder to ground than usual, but that means you’re doing it with resistance like working out with weights and resistance bands in the gym, it’s harder, but it makes better magic muscles. Finally, many of the energy exercises in Franz Bardon’s Initiation into Hermetics are suitable too. However, because of the time in which the book was written it sounds like “Electro-Magnetic fluid exercises” rather than “energy work” because the language was a little different then. Finally, I recommend the exercises in Robert Bruce’s Astral Dynamics for dealing with how to astralproject. Interestingly most of these exercises train the Willpower and concentration as well. I am going to try and develop the Psy section on this website as a good place to start.
Channelling Power into words
Magical ritual often involves speech. Yes, magic can be done entirely internally and perhaps for some practitioners, no speech is necessary. However, this can limit the capacity of some to perform magic. So a small part of their practice should be channelling their energy into words.
Without learning this training, the words in rituals fall flat and do little. The practitioner is required to direct energy with their fingers and implements rather than using the words of the rituals themselves. There’s nothing wrong per sé with using fingers for channelling energy, but what remains of many long practised traditions are just the words and it seems such a shame not to be able to rely on what remains alone and practice something purely in the form it was intended.
The main tools for practising this are collecting energy and then expelling it through the voice while reading wordy rituals such as those written by authors Doreen Valiente and Eliphas Levi. Even short lines, chants and mantras are great ways to get started. In our day-to-day lives, this is often further trained by using energy to add a warmth to the vocal chords when speaking to others and practising or reciting dramatic speeches, yet there is nothing quite like dramatic rituals for working this skill.
Transcendental MagicHelpful Mental States and Balanced Psychology
Have you heard of the real-life Witch Wars? In fact, they are probably the most embarrassing part of being a magical practitioner in the modern day. Many groups leaders of spiritual group in the UK, seem to end up very unbalanced and the next thing you know their ego is bruised. What do they do? Fire off a spell at someone. Next thing you know that person is firing something back and we all end up witnessing drama from those who are meant to be the most spiritual people in the UK. It doesn’t come across as very well developed in my opinion!
Magic often throws a lot of unbalanced energy in our faces and whips us up to profound heights of heaven. This does not always lead us to be the most grounded or kind people. In fact I have often seen many demonstrate that some practitioners are as stubborn, wrathful, flighty and emotional and people can get. I guess that as we wander in the spiritual realms the less and less important the things of this world seem, sometimes including people. It is not just that magic itself can unbalance people, but also that magic seems to attract the broken in the first place and then it does not exactly help. It calls to those seeking another way to excel in life and it pretends to be a good alternative to fixing ourselves. It’s not unusual for magic to both require and develop the ego. The end result is the most broken, unbalanced, and sometimes rude of people. But like any substance used to avoid fixing ourselves, it keeps people stunted.
Franz Bardon wrote as one of the first exercises in his Initiation into Hermetics the initiation needs to first balance each part of themselves that corresponds to each element. They must balance their fire, their water, their air and their earth. He notes that the soul of the initiate would then act like a magnet for attracting good energy at least that’s what I remember. In fact, this book is probably one of the best for developing all the magical muscles though its section although its theory is some what lacking and the language is strange. Crowley also wrote about this in Liber Librae which can be found in Gems form the Equinox. Similarly, he suggested that if you lack the elemental balance within yourself then you will only attract weak elementals, but instead of your being able to direct them, they would be able to manipulate and unbalance you.
One of the best ways to work on this is by reviewing your life with a journal. Franz Bardon suggests this in his Initiation into Hermetics. Look at how you acted in life. Try your best to be honest with yourself. For each element: fire, water, air and earth, think about times when you acted as if you had an excess or deficiency of said element. A deficiency of earth can mean you’re anxious a lot, but an excess can make you lazy. A deficiency of air could make you illogical and unable to communicate well. An excess can make you flighty and fickle. A deficiency of water can make you cold and unfeeling where as an excess can be an emotional car wreck. With fire, deficiency can be depressing and lacking in all desires, but an excess can make someone brash and hot-tempered. Try to redo the parts you think you did badly even on your own in front of a mirror. Journal why it might have been difficult to do it and your brains reaction to the redo.
Franz Bardon Initiation Into HermeticsWhere do I start?
Well, I hope as time goes on to build a training program accessible for free on here, but I have a life to deal with, 3 jobs, a coven to teach, and a very active social life, so it might be a long time before it is ever complete. In the meantime, consider adding the following to your weekly practice.
To make it easier to do something do it when you’re doing something regularly. So, for example, I often clean my energy body while I’m in the shower cleaning my physical body. I often meditate and do rituals when I am walking my dog. When I have large challenges in my life, I do rituals to help me succeed. By intertwining many magical things with daily or regular occurrences, I train myself to do magic daily in some form or another without it getting in the way of life.
For building Willpower and energy capacity work through some of the exercises in the psy section of the website and regularly do a full energy body cleanse and re-focus. If you know how to do it, do small qi-circulation and allow the energy to sit in front of your lower dantian.
For building meditation and concentration focus on each of the chakras of the energy body in turn for a time.
For channelling energy into words, occasionally work rituals written by Doreen Valiente or in Eliphas Levi’s Transcendental Magic. From time to time write your own and work these instead.
For cultivating Helpful mental states and balanced psychology, by reviewing your days or weeks and journalling is important. Look at times you acted rashly or hot tempered, times you had excessive emotion and try to understanding why. Look at times you perhaps were too distanced and devoid of emotion. What about times you were too lazy or too work focused. Think about times you were anxious and do a redo at home practicing to not have anxiety. Being honest with yourself is a good start and then practise redoing your actions in each area in a balanced way. Work through your fears, ego and try to let go of attachments. By practicing redoing these things you achieve two things:
- You retrain yourself to act in a more balanced way
- You remind yourself that you might make mistakes but that you can go through life with doing things better.
Keep going and grow this training with your own exercises but remember don’t abandon any of these areas of training they’re all important.