Category: Magic/Occult

By Lupa

Chaos! Mayhem! Disorder!

Well, not quite.

Chaos, in this case, isn’t about being 100% destructive, or worshipping Tiamat, or being a Discordian. Rather, it hails back to the original Greek definition for the term–the pure potential that predated the ordered world that we know today. In my mind, Chaos is like a round ball of Play-doh sitting in its cup. Take it out, make something with it–that’s order. Smash whatever you’re made–that’s disorder. Roll the Play-doh back into a ball and pop it back into the cup–back to Chaos.

The roots of Chaos magic are several; Peter J. Carroll, the creator of Chaos magic, was inspired by everything from shamanism to the works of Austin Osman Spare, one of Aleister Crowley’s contemporaries. Rather than being a tradition in and of itself, it is a system that boils magic down to its bare-bones components, free of cultural trappings, to create a practical methodology. There are no set gods or spirits, and Chaos magic may work within any model of how magic works, from energetic to psychological and then some. Additionally, there are no central religious beliefs; for many, though not all, Chaos magicians, belief is a tool to be used as needed.

And that brings me to one of the hallmarks of Chaos magic: paradigmal piracy. This is the practice of taking effective, practical aspects of various paradigms (religions, magical systems, etc.) and using them to work effective magic. Unlike eclectic paganism, this is not done for primarily spiritual purposes, nor is it generally a permanent adoption. Joshua Wetzel references two types of piracy–buffet style, in which a magician takes a little of each of several paradigms, and immersion, where s/he may spend a certain amount of time working with a paradigm full-time to learn what s/he finds useful.

One goal of piracy may be to gain new methods of achieving gnosis. Gnosis, in Chaos magic terms, is different than what it is understood to be in ceremonial traditions. In Chaos, gnosis is an altered state of mind in which the mind is focused on a single point, object or other thing. There are several ways to achieve gnosis. Inhibitory methods include sensory deprivation, quiet meditation, and the “death posture”, a particular way of holding the body that induces trance. Excitatory methods range from dancing to the point of exhaustion, to taking entheogens, and even sex. Once gnosis is achieved, the magician may then move on to whatever magic s/he intended to work.

While a Chaos magician may work with just about any sort of magic, there are two in particular that are associated with Chaos magic, sigils and servitors. The sigil was derived from Spare’s work. Seeking an easier way to work magic than long, drawn-out ceremonies, Spare devised a method of creating a picture of one’s desire by writing out what the magician wanted out of a particular magical act. Certain letter would be removed from the sentence, and the remaining letters rearranged and overlapped or connected to create an abstract picture. The resulting sigil would then be charged.

Servitors are thought forms (or spirits, if you will) that are created by the magician to perform certain magical tasks. They may be created in a similar manner as sigils, with the purpose and name of the servitor turned into one or more sigils. Some magicians create physical representations of their servitors. While servitors are generally created to carry out single tasks and are then destroyed afterward, some magicians do create permanent servitors for multiple uses.

More generally speaking, some Chaos magicians use Carroll’s Eight Colors of Magick. Carroll uses different correspondences than Isaac Bonewits did in “Real Magic”, and assigns one color/type to each point of the eight-pointed chaostar. The correspondences are as follows:

Black: Death
Blue: Wealth
Green: Love
Yellow: Ego
Purple or Silver: Sex
Orange: Thinking
Red: War
Octarine: “Pure” Magic

Octarine is the name Terry Pratchett gave to the (humorous) theory regarding the eighth color of the spectrum.

As to the connection with Chaos theory in physics, Carroll dedicated the first chunk of “Liber Kaos” to the scientific exploration of how magic works. While a thorough understanding of physics isn’t necessary to be a Chaos magician, a basic grasp of Chaos theory is useful.

Additionally, Chaos magic is sometimes confused with Discordianism, a parody religion founded in the late 1950s with the publication of the Principia Discordia. While a number of Chaos magicians may draw on Discordianism, they are not one and the same.

This is an incredibly basic introduction to Chaos magic; my recommendation would be to do further research at the following websites, as well as the recommended reading list below.

http://www.chaosmatrix.org
http://www.spiralnature.com
http://www.irreality.net

Sources/Recommended Reading

Carroll, Peter J. (1987). Liber Null & Psychonaut. Boston: Weiser.
Cunningham, David, Taylor Ellwood and Amanda Wagner (2003). Creating Magical Entities. Ohio: Egregore Publishing.
Ellwood, Taylor (2004). Pop Culture Magick. Stafford: Immanion Press/Megalithica Books.
— (1992). Liber Kaos. Boston: Weiser.
Hawkins, Jaq D. (2001). Understanding Chaos Magic. Capall Bann.
— (2003). Chaos Monkey. Capall Bann.
Hine, Phil (1995). Condensed Chaos. Tempe: New Falcon.
— (1999). Prime Chaos. Tempe: New Falcon.
Wetzel, Joshua (2006). The Paradigmal Pirate. Stafford: Immanion Press/Megalithica Books.

Konton Magazine – Available through cafepress.com; no new issues have appeared for some time, but back issues are readily available for new Chaos International – Difficult to get in the United States, sporadically published in London, but worth it if you can get it

About Lupa
Lupa is a therioshaman (http://therioshamanism.com) living in Portland, OR with hir mate and fellow author, Taylor Ellwood, Sun Ce and Ember the cats, and too many books. S/he is the author of several books on pagan, occult and Otherkin related topics, to include Fang and Fur, Blood and Bone: A Primal Guide to Animal Magic, A Field Guide to Otherkin, and Kink Magic: Sex Magic Beyond Vanilla (cowritten with Taylor). S/he may be found online at http://www.thegreenwolf.com.

by Taylor Ellwood

Over the last couple of years I’ve noted that few magicians capitalize on using popular culture as a method of working magic. Inevitably this seems to occur because of an ingrained belief that magic systems must come from a recognized lineage or old tradition. There’s an almost childish dislike of the idea of using popular culture as a means of working magic and this has sadly taken many mages away from the cutting edge of magical experimentation. Yet popular culture can provide the means and method of working magic. The purpose of this article is to introduce how popular culture can be used effectively.

Popular culture can be considered to be culture that deviates from the comfortable mainstream in a manner that opposes that mainstream or represents an alternative lifestyle/culture. A good example of popular culture is Buffy the Vampire slayer, seen on televisions the world over. Buffy slays vampires, has friends who practice magic and are lesbians, and lives a lifestyle that only links up to the mainstream culture tangentially. In short, Buffy is popular culture because what she represents goes against the safe and comfortable reality that mainstream cultures prefer. With popular culture you usually have a segment of society that is highly interested in the television show, pop star, or phenomena. These people can be considered cultish in the fanatical devotion and zeal they show a particular program, pop star, or whatever else.

Mainstream culture tolerates popular culture, but also in some manner or another either seeks to absorb the popular culture into itself or seeks to disparage it. That some magicians I know balk at the idea of using popular culture as a method of magic shows how successful mainstream culture is at influencing people. Mainstream culture may not always successfully absorb pop culture into it, but it seems to always successfully manipulate the perceptions of the majority of people in regards to pop culture.

Let’s put theory aside, however, and focus on the larger issue. There are a variety of ways to use pop culture in your workings, but I’m going to focus only on one. I direct interested readers to my book Pop Culture Magick, which focuses on some of the other methods of working with pp culture. Alternatively I hope you’ll be inspired to be creative with your approach toward magic and pop culture.

Harry Potter seems a fine example to use. He’s definitely part of the pop culture phenomena and he practices magic in his fantasy world. HP as we’ll call him from here out is part of pop culture when you consider how parts of the mainstream such as fundamentalist Christianity condemn and hate HP, seeing him as a threat to Christianity and its precious brainwashed masses. He’s a threat to Christianity and a boon to magic, if only because he represents magic to so many people. Children and adults read about his adventures and they want to be just like him. It doesn’t matter that the books or movie aren’t wholly accurate about the practice of magic. What matters is that HP represents, for the children and the adults who read him, access to the world of magic and all of its wonders. That in turn is a threat to any fundamentalist religion precisely because magic offers a way out of the dogmatic mindset of religion.

Around the time the first HP movie came out, David Cunningham and I came up with a pop culture working that revolved around HP. We’d both noted how upset many Christians were about HP, so much so that they were even burning the HP books. We’d also noticed with interest how many adults as well as children were reading the HP series. So we decided to do a working with HP entity, one that was mischievous and fun and would last a good long time.

The focus of the working centered around the idea of using the negativity the Christians focused toward HP in such a manner that the negative energy actually empowered HP to help realize the worst fear of the Christians, that people who read HP would show an interest in really learning about the occult. To do this we needed to construct a visualization that showed that worst fear. David and I did a lot of online searching for images of HP as well as some other images that we felt would be useful. We took the Hogwarts School of Magic that was used in movie poster and put it in the background of the image we were creating. Next we put a hoard of people rushing toward that same castle, eager to study the secrets of the occult. Then we placed an image of ruined church and an angry HP standing on the rubble, calling down energy. We placed a studious HP beside that image. He was reading a book and pouring potions into a black cauldron. We placed half of an image of a catholic priest in the cauldron. At the top of the image we had the phrase “Couldn’t we all use a little magic?” We then sent the image through email to other mages who were interested in our project so they could charge up the entities. Another thing I did was to print out the image and then place it in public areas. It would serve to either draw peoples’ attention to magic or it would get torn down by a disgruntled Christian or other kind of fundamentalist and in the process that would charge the entity up a bit.

The idea of the image was that HP’s school of magic and the people rushing toward that school to learn more about magic represented what we were seeking. HP standing over the church and boiling the Christian priest reflects the ultimate fear of Christianity, namely that HP will draw people from Christianity and thus destroy it. Those images were picked so as to emphasize that negativity and accordingly draw on the energy that Christians were focusing on HP. The overall result we are seeking with this working is one wherein that energy the Christians focus on HP will be used to help realize their worst fear, namely that people would become interested in learning about the occult. Note that I mention interest in learning, but not necessarily converting. We both felt it would go a little too far if we had the spell focus on converting people to the occult as opposed to instead learning about it because they suddenly found an interest in the idea of wielding magic themselves. A willing decision to practice magic is far better than an unwilling decision.

By having HP stir up the interest of the reader in the occult we don’t infringe on the free will of that person; rather we seek to stimulate the person. There’s obviously no guarantee that the person will start practicing magic, but even if he or she becomes interested enough to consider reading a book on the subject other than HP the goal has been accomplished in the sense that it is a start.

One thing David and I both noted with interest was the dynamic energy of the HP entity. I suspect this is due to the amount of attention and belief that goes into HP. Attention and belief are forms of energy and as such that energy can bring to life anything, including a character out of a fantasy series. If a magician chooses to believe in the reality of the pop culture entity s/he is able to access the energy of such an entity. This is remarkably similar to working with god forms, but it has the added benefit of having much more energy directed toward it. A pop culture entity such as HP has much more energy directed toward it because it’s in the media so much. The old god form may get some attention from people who choose to work with it, but it doesn’t have the ready supply of a large group of believers at its beck and call in contemporary times. The lack of attention and belief don’t destroy a god, but that lack does take away from the available resources it has.

Working with any pop culture entity has its benefits. While what I’ve listed above is one example of a working with the HP entity, it’s not the only way you can work with it. For instance, I’ve done pathworking (A form of meditation) with the HP entity to get answers for particular situations in my life. The HP entity could also be worked with as a teacher of magic. The possibilities are endless. The creativity and will of the mage determines how well the HP entity or any other entity will work for hir.
Of course the best way to work with a pop culture entity is to study it carefully. In working with HP, I first read all the books and saw the movies. I paid close attention to how fans and Christians talked about HP, as the attitudes would in part determine the attributes I assigned HP. Once I had all the data I needed I put that data into my visualization of HP. When David and I did the ritual we also empowered the HP visualization with some sex magic and then burned the image we had to release our intentions to the HP entity and set it on its task. We noted that for the next few months a sharp increase in anti HP rhetoric occurred, which rather pleased both of us because it meant the HP entity was drawing on the negative energy to start its task. We also noted an interesting occurrence when one of the magicians charged up the sigil/image.

This mage enjoyed charging up her spells by jogging and the one day she decided whimsically to listen to Christmas carols while charging up the HP image. The batteries in her walk man stopped half way through her jog and when she got back from her jog she felt ill. The next day her walk man worked fine and she no longer felt ill. What she hadn’t realized was that in listening to Christmas carols, which are associated with Christians, she’d instructed the HP entity to first drawing energy from the walk man and second from her self. The lesson to be learned is to always be careful when charging entities up, pop culture or otherwise, unless of course you want to become the entity’s dinner.

I’ve noted with a lot of interest the success of the HP entity with its task of stimulating interest in the occult. The Gray School run by Oberon Zell Ravenheart started up a couple years after the working with the entity. The school is modeled off of the school of the HP universe and has gotten a lot people interested in magic. I’ve also noted that both children and adults often talk about wanting to be like HP, casting magic, and that’s an encouraging sign.

I hope I’ve demonstrated that pop culture can be an effective tool of magic. There are endless possibilities within whatever you consider pop culture to be. The exploration of those possibilities is an opportunity for all of us to experiment with magic, in new directions.

Author’s Acknowledgment
I’d like to thank David Cunningham who co-created the initial working with the Harry Potter entity as well as doing most of the work in constructing the image we used to visualize HP. I’d also like to thank members of the Chaos-l list and the Geist project list for participating in the experiment.
Author Bio
Taylor Ellwood is the author of Pop Culture Magic, Space/Time Magic, Inner Alchemy, Multi-Media Magic (Forthcoming) and co-author of Kink Magic: Beyond Vanilla Sex Magic. He is also the non-fiction editor of Megalithica Books. For more information about him and his latest projects please visit http://www.thegreenwolf.com and http://teriel.livejournal.com

by Bob Makransky; Excerpted from Magical Almanac Ezine, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MagicalAlmanac. Copyright © 2007 by Bob Makransky. All rights reserved

Magic can be defined as the intentional manipulation of the force which most people term “luck”, by means of the deliberate cultivation of the faculty which most people term “intuition”. Luck is not a subjective state, but rather is a force out there in the world at large. As is the case also with vitality and physical strength, some people are just born with lots of luck (make the choice to be lucky in this incarnation), whereas others are born with very little luck. However, there are things we can do to increase our luck, since ultimately luck – albeit an outside force – is controlled by our attitude.

Luck has nothing to do with morality, or how nice we are. If a selfish, nasty, manipulative S.O.B. believes that he is lucky, he’ll be lucky. It’s the belief that we are lucky that makes us lucky, not how virtuous we are. If we expect luck to happen, it will tend to happen; whereas if we expect failure, that’s what we’ll get. People who tend to be lucky also tend to expect luck to happen; and the reverse. So the state of being lucky or unlucky tends to perpetuate itself.

Luck is not the same thing as getting what we think we want. How often has it happened that there was something that we desperately wanted; and we didn’t get it and were disappointed; and later on we discovered that it was a darn good thing we didn’t get it – it was lucky we didn’t get it – because if we had gotten it we would have been sorry, or else we wouldn’t have gotten this better thing instead; but at the time of our disappointment we considered ourselves unlucky.

What luck is, is the sense that the world is sustaining, protecting, and nourishing us. It’s the feeling that we are being taken care of and provided for, that the impersonal forces of the universe are watching out for us and helping us. Although luck is not the same thing as getting what we think we want, it nonetheless leads to it: getting what we want is a byproduct of the attitude that we are being helped and cared for; that we are deserving and worthy of happiness.

Luck operates as quick little flashes every now and again. Lucky people (those with a lucky attitude) are attuned to their lucky chances when they occur. They have the patience to wait before acting until the moment is ripe; and then, when a lucky chance pops up, they see it and grab it. Conversely, when a lucky chance pops up before unlucky people, they reject it automatically. They don’t see or understand that that opportunity was their lucky chance, so either they don’t notice it at all, or else they notice it but reject it.

Thus there’s the same amount of luck going on for everybody all the time, but lucky people, by their attitude, are positioned to make use of it, whereas unlucky people aren’t. They are too hung up in their own preconceived expectations of what they think they want; they’re like spoiled children trying to order the Spirit around. Instead of receiving gratefully what the Spirit chooses to give them, they angrily reject the Spirit’s gifts because they don’t conform to their precise images of what they think they want. As an example, more than once I’ve seen the Spirit bring a person a true soul mate when they were on the rebound from a break-up, and still too filled with self-pity to see that this person they met “accidentally” was the one they were praying for all along. How many times have I seen the Spirit bring someone their true heart’s desire on a silver platter, yet the person rejected it because they still had too much self-hatred to permit themselves to feel happiness. What keeps us from seeing and grasping the Spirit’s gifts is our own self-pity, which blinds us to everything except how much we’re suffering

Luck and doubt work inversely – each one serves to vanquish the other. The absence of doubt is responsible for the phenomenon known as “beginner’s luck”. Beginners don’t have doubts about what they are doing – it looks easy, so they try it and find that it is easy. They don’t know enough to grasp all the pitfalls and complexities in what they are doing instinctively (by intuition).

Therefore, to increase luck, it is necessary to banish doubt. The hard part is, that just as it takes money to make money, it takes luck to believe that we are lucky. That’s what makes it so hard to break out of a bad luck streak. The reason why people get into bad luck streaks in the first place is because our society encourages doubt, not luck. Society wants people to believe that their best chance for luck is to play the game by society’s rules, rather than to follow their own dreams and feelings and hunches. Those who try to strike on their own are met with great resistance and doubt by their fellows: by banks, government and business institutions, their own family and friends.

Therefore, a truly lucky attitude also requires being close-mouthed about oneself and one’s affairs, so as not to become a target for other people’s jealousy, which is the same thing as their doubt, which they can hurl to arouse one’s own doubt.

What unlucky people are really striving for – which unlucky people must learn to see within themselves if they are to change their luck – is self-pity. And unlucky people get it. They are as lucky at getting what they want (excuses to pity themselves) as lucky people are at getting what they want. Self-pity is a drain on the energy needed to bring luck. We each have only a finite amount of energy, which we can spend on either luck or self-pity, but not both. It is our society which teaches us to pity ourselves – which stands to gain from our collective self-pity and “helplessness”.

Changing from an unlucky to a lucky attitude is hard to do – no bones about it. Although there is indeed a Law of Abundance, to make that one work requires the utmost will and discipline. To arbitrarily adopt an attitude of carefree abundance when we’re flat broke and being pressed by creditors; or an attitude of radiant good health when we’re dying of AIDS; isn’t easy to do. The only motivation we have is that there is no choice – it’s either change, or self-pity. It’s a true triumph of the will to be able to arrive at an attitude of being nourished and protected even though nothing is going right. True luck is being able to maintain our equanimity, our cool, our belief that we’re in good shape, even in the midst of a maelstrom.

So now we come down to the question of how we can change our luck. Astrology (propitious times to act or not act), charms, talismans, etc. can help us to focus our energy on our intent to become lucky. They work to the extent that we have faith in them and believe that they work. They are vehicles of intent, not the important thing, although they can be useful, just as a car can be useful to take us to our destination once we decide where we want to go. But the important thing is the decision, the irrevocable decision, to change our luck – not the vehicle we use to implement it.

Changing our luck basically involves two things: visualization and appreciation. Much has been written about visualization (see e.g. Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization), so only a few points will be mentioned here. Visualization is similar to normal daydreaming, except the latter is done with thinking, and the former is done with feeling. Daydreaming is done in the third person and the future tense, whereas visualization is done in the first person and the present tense. In visualization you imagine yourself to be actually in the middle of the scene as if it were unfolding around you here and now; and you let yourself feel all the joy you would feel if that scene were actually happening. The secret of visualization is to convince yourself that what you are wishing for is already true, and to allow yourself to feel the feelings you would feel if that were in fact the case. When we are depressed, our tendency is to dwell upon our unhappiness, and to play that tape over and over in our heads all day long. The idea of creative visualization is to create a space for happiness to exist in the midst of our suffering; to dethrone the preeminence our self-pity; and then to slowly expand that feeling until it becomes dominant.

Also, visualization should not be overly specific. For example, “winning the lottery” is a silly thing to wish for or to visualize. It’s too specific, too confining to the Spirit – as if one were trying to dictate to it. “Wealth” or better yet, “Freedom from money worries” is a better thing to visualize because it gives the Spirit more free play, more liberty to send us suggestions on how to achieve wealth. Similarly, to wish that Mary or John would fall in love with us is too specific, and verges on black magic. It’s better to just visualize love from some unnamed person, since if all we want specifically is John’s love or Mary’s love, then we’ll reject Sam’s love or Judy’s love when it is offered to us – perfectly good love, but not our specific image of what we thought we wanted. In other words, the chief difference between normal daydreaming and visualization is that the former is pegged to specific expectations, whereas the latter is pinned to a feeling of general happiness and well-being.

Luck means letting the Spirit bring us what we want in its own way, in its own time. This doesn’t mean we sit on our hands and vegetate; it just means keeping open to different possibilities as they arise, rather than clinging to some specific payoff (image of what we think it is we want).
The other thing we need to change our luck is appreciation, which means appreciating what we already have – considering ourselves to be already lucky, rather than already unlucky. This isn’t too hard to do: we live in a beautiful world, in a wealthy country, in a time of relative peace and prosperity; we have enough to eat, we are educated and have millions of opportunities at hand. If we don’t already consider ourselves to be damned lucky, then we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

What we are aiming for in both visualization and in appreciating what we already have is a joyous, optimistic, expectant attitude. Although it takes a good attitude to have a good attitude, it doesn’t necessarily take a good attitude to want a good attitude. When our desire to have a good attitude, no matter what is happening to us, exceeds our desire for some certain thing to happen, THEN our luck will start to change.

If we just keep plugging away, at a certain point we come to realize that what we really want isn’t health or wealth or love from other people, but rather happiness, contentment in our own hearts. We come to understand that the health or wealth or love is only a symbol for what we really want, which is to be joyous unto ourselves for no particular reason at all. The health or wealth or love we visualized so intensely for so long doesn’t have anything to do with it except as sort of a mnemonic device, like the beads on a rosary. We find we can be joyous in our visualizations and in our appreciation of what we already have – we don’t even need the visualizations to come true in order to be happy. It’s at this point that our luck will start to change, and the visualizations will come true.

About the Author
Bob Makransky is a systems analyst, programmer, and professional astrologer. For the past 30 years he has lived on a farm in highland Guatemala where he is a Mayan priest and is head of the local blueberry growers association. His website is http://www.dearbrutus.com. To subscribe to Bob’s free monthly astro-magical ezine, just send an e-mail to: MagicalAlmanac-subscribe@yahoogroups.com).

Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats’ channeled masterpiece “A Vision” explains the true nature of reincarnation – what it really is and how it really works. Starting with the December issue of Magical Almanac, Bob Makransky’s free monthly ezine of astrology and magic, will be presenting a six-article series which explains the theory of reincarnation as described in “A Vision”. This series includes complete instructions for safe and easy techniques you can use on your own to run past life regressions and probable reality progressions; and to recapitulate memories from your present lifetime (thereby releasing the pent-up emotions which you have invested in your memories).

By Colleen Deatsman and Paul Bowersox

Everybody knows that the manipulation of quantifiable energy to yield repeatedly consistent results is called science. These scientific results can be achieved independent of the operator. We pagans know that the manipulation of unquantifiable energy to produce anecdotal results is called magick. Often times, these magickal results seem operator dependent. That doesn’t mean that consistent results aren’t achieved with magick, it just means that those who manipulate energy through magickal practice need to approach their work understanding the mechanism driving the process. That mechanism, once understood, can operate independent of the magickal operator to produce consistent results. This basic mechanism will be discussed here.

So, what form does your pagan practice take? Are you strictly into the Goddess? Maybe the Goddess and God together? Perhaps the formless non-dual? Whatever your orientation, your pagan magickal practice boils down to three universal elements. These three elements are the same for us as they are for the Buddhists, the Hindus, or the Judeo-Christians. They are the holy trinity of spiritual discipline, and when properly employed, these three comprise the key to the kingdom. They are:

INTENT FOCUS ENERGY

Any spiritual practice can be broken down into these three components. This implies then that no matter what we may embrace as our beliefs, or in what circumstances we may find ourselves, we will always be able to recognize and embrace these common threads, finding joy, solace, and magick, no matter what.

In my books Inner Power and Energy For Life (Llewellyn), I detail the many ways to utilize intent, focus and energy for self-healing and as a means to enhance awareness. These components are also particularly applicable for use in magickal ritual and manifestation.

Intent can be viewed as the goal, the purpose, or the meaning of the practice. Shamans set their intent before they journey in trance to non-ordinary reality. Without proper intent, they may as well be daydreaming about unicorns and fairy dust. This might be fun, but it doesn’t amount to much as spiritual discipline. Intent binds the shaman to the task and enables Helping Spirit energies to effectively interact with them. Candle magick is another practice completely anchored in intent. The witch who performs candle magick has a specific outcome in mind before the candle is ritually lit.
Every ritual, in fact, has an intention, the goal being understood and the meaning clear as the ritual is performed. Clarity of intent is essential if the energies of the universe are to be manipulated magickally for our use. The old computer adage, “garbage in, garbage out” can just as easily be applied to any spiritual practice where intent is utilized. As I said, that’s EVERY spiritual practice.
The tricky part of intent is that we first need to know what we want. We need to fully understand what we are really after before we can make anything happen. In my private counseling practice, I get people all the time who have no idea what they want, or why they want it. It’s common for people to say they want more money. I always ask them why. Invariably, their answer, their actual goal, is something completely different. That’s why understanding and addressing one’s intent is so very important. How can anyone expect any degree of productive outcome from magickal practice with inaccurate, conflicted, or undirected intent about what is desired?

Do you want a new love interest? To what end? If you are going to draw someone into your life through the magickal manipulation of energy, what are you planning to do once they appear? Will you employ the same behaviors in the same way that contributed to your ending up alone in the first place? This is something that must be addressed with intent. Do you want inner peace, spiritual insight, or to gaze upon the face of the Goddess? Okay, but what then? What do you plan to do with that peace, that perspective? Intent demands not only that you know what you want, but that you fully understand the purpose of your desire, what it means to you, and the shift within you that will allow your manifested intent to be integrated into your life. Without this, we might as well just play mumble-de-peg with our athames and call it a day. Nothing will come of magickal work without proper intent.

The second element is focus. Focus is the means, the discipline, and the pointed action we take to set our intent in motion. During ritual, energy is gathered, built, and concentrated through the action of focus. For a Zen Buddhist, the practice of sitting in meditation is the focus. Meditation itself isn’t the intent of the practice, nor does it generate any energy on its own. What meditation does is focus. The actions performed in ritual; the calling of the quarters, the invocations and banishings, are all performed as acts of focus. We cast the circle to pinpoint the area of activity. We banish to dispel any influences that may draw energy away from our intent. We invoke in order to specify the energies we wish to manifest. All of this is focus.

This is extremely important to keep in mind if you are someone who designs rituals for your group or for your individual Book of Shadows. Keep it simple. Keep it focused. The idea is to concentrate all of the energy on the intent. Unfortunately, in the attempt to make ritual “interesting”, elements are sometimes added for dramatic effect that dissipate the energy instead. We must always remember that what we focus on, we give energy to, and what we give energy to, we give life to. Every time you direct the focus away from the desired intent, you spend some of the energy you have raised on that digression. That might be fine for high holidays or feast days when part of the intent is to spread the energy throughout the community, but it is counterproductive when one is trying to co-create a new reality. Focus is the mechanism we employ to deliver the energy we have raised to the intent we have specified.

The third element is energy. Energy is everything. Energy is eternal and energy is everywhere, all the time. The universe hangs on an energetic web. This web exists just outside our everyday perception, and it is the ubiquitous undercurrent that we draw on by setting our intent and performing our acts of focus. Energy is the fuel, the currency of the universe, and the spirit’s stock in trade. We have to realize that everything in the physical and spiritual worlds is comprised of energy. Each of these things or beings has its own energetic character, to be sure, but it is energy nonetheless. We use energy to accomplish a particular task, or we direct energy in order to encourage an energetic response from a particular source.

When you come right down to it, all magick is the exercise of energetic sourcing. Source-ery, if you will. We draw on that source energy, focusing it and concentrating it until we can release it as high-octane fuel to power our specific intent. If we have done our job properly, that energy will be enough to usher our imagined desire from the ethereal plane of concept into the physical world. Voila! We have now manifested our desire through the application of intent, focus, and energy.

When participating in the magickal manipulation of energy, it is important to remember that the universe is sentient. All matter is densified high-vibration universal energy, and all high-vibration universal energy is intelligent. No matter what you might think of our current President, even he is comprised entirely of intelligent universal energy. For this reason, we must always exercise responsibility when employing the triumvirate of intent, focus, and energy. We must keep in mind that every component of the universe is interrelated. When we co-create reality, we are changing the shape of the universe by redirecting and reforming the currents of intelligent energy within the web. That great power demands great responsibility. Part of that awareness of our responsibility requires being accountable for what we do. Just because we know how to manipulate and focus energy, doesn’t mean we must feel compelled to use it compulsively. It’s been said that if you carry around a hammer in your hand, everything starts to look like a nail. That self-centered view is what has brought our world to the brink. Energy, being intelligent, also has memory. When we magickally manipulate and direct energy in the service of our intent, we leave our mark upon it, like psychic fingerprints. That action is tied to us. Because of this, we can never perform magick anonymously, or create a reality without accountability.

As members of a spiritual path that reveres our Mother Earth, we must employ our energetic expertise with discretion, wisdom and responsibility. In this way, we will forever be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, no matter what our specific beliefs or practices might be.

Blessed Be.

Colleen Deatsman, MA, LPC. Author of Energy For Life: Connect with the Source (Llewellyn 2006) and Inner Power: Six Techniques for Increased Energy and Self-Healing (Llewellyn 2005), is a Licensed Professional Counselor, Registered Social Worker, Reiki Master, Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, Certified Alternative Healing Consultant, and Shamanic Practitioner. She has a Masters degree and owns a private practice in counseling and alternative healing services in Michigan. www.colleendeatsman.com

Paul Bowersox is a writing coach, editor and contributing writer for a number of authors and publications including Inner Power: Six Techniques for Increased Energy and Self-Healing and Energy For Life: Connect with the Source (Llewellyn). He is always interested in new projects and can be e-mailed at wordmaster4you@aol.com. Paul currently lives, writes, and works in rural Northeastern Pennsylvania.