The logical question after yesterday’s blog would be the question, “What’s is the difference between a successful spell and an unsuccessful spell?” To this, my best answer would be that one of the four elements is missing or wrong.
Power
My best explanation for power would have to do with energy manipulation. It is simply the strength of your focus combined with the intensity of your desire and the efficiency with which you manipulate energy.
I believe that a large amount of power will almost always get something to happen. Maybe instead of bringing you a big paycheck in the mail you’ll get a big bill in the mail, but something will have happened if you push that energy out into the world. I also believe that this has to do with how quickly the form manifests from spell.
This seems to be the simplest and most common aspect of magick to train regularly. Every book you’ll ever read about magick expounds on the necessity of learning to focus the mind through meditation and energy work. I would probably say that this is one of our strongest skills as a magickal community. Of course, there’s always more work to be done on it and more exercises to learn/create. This very possibly is the difference between the people in the psychiatric hospitals and us (though I’ve never met many people who have serious mental illnesses so I’m actually quite ignorant on this topic).
Technique
Technique would be the part of magick that separates all of the branches of magick. Sigil magick, high magick, making charms, energy healing, etc. are all forms of technique.
Technique would probably play the biggest part in focusing the power to do a certain thing. Good technique probably will get you the results you want, but they may not be quite as extravagant as you wanted them to be. Maybe you did a spell for rain. You may not get that rain for 6 months or it might just be a bit of a drizzle or fog if there’s not enough power.
I really think that we have explored a large number of techniques, but this is a place to make improvements. We have all witnessed getting what we wanted, but very few of us have gotten what we wanted in a manner that was exactly how we wanted. You may have brought love into your life, but you didn’t say, “I want a friend to call me with a blind date scheduled with the perfect person for me” and get it. This may fit into this category or not. That’s absolutely up for discussion.
Belief
Belief is what we’ve been talking about in conjunction with what exactly magick can do. Belief is probably best described by having the conscious desire coincide perfectly with the unconscious ideas about the world.
Belief, in my mind is simply a filter. So, if you want to conjure up a fireball to shoot from your fingertips, and you absolutely don’t believe it, nothing will happen no matter how perfect everything else is. Now, on the other hand, if you can believe that something may happen, maybe when you turn around the flower that happened to be hanging above your candle might have caught on fire. And with 100% belief, you’d actually conjure a fireball (if you had enough focus or power and the technique was good enough to focus the energy towards that one goal). This seems to be a huge flaw in our current community. It seems only the delusional actually can believe that they could do anything of this nature…or even of being able to do a spell to bring a large sum of money into their lives somehow. Belief, I believe (haha), will be one of the biggest obstacles in any furtherment of magick, and I really don’t know how to change what I believe.
Other
Well, this would be a large number of other factors that not all belief systems agree on. Maybe this could be spiritual help, destiny to do this one act, you’re an Aries and so you can throw fireballs easier than you can make it rain, etc. This is probably not all that easily talked about because it’s such a large category for catch all stuff.
Power: What the masses look for is evidence of this power. Are we doing anything more than visualizing this energy? Is it all psychosomatic? We’ll eventually have to show some sort of quantification, you know?
Technique: It would be interesting to see if technique has any bearing at all on the actual performance of magic… Chaoticians and left-handers might say that props are for those who need them.
Belief: You don’t have to believe in the apple for it to fall. Thoughts?
Other: This would be the reason for experimentation, would it not? There may be some truth to these ‘rules’ that pop up in various traditions. Let us explore them carefully, lest we encounter a glass ceiling
I just want to chime in real quick about belief: You do believe that the apple is going to fall off the tree, right? Have you ever not believed it? Do you know anyone who has ever believed that it will do anything else?
Abook, not related to magic per say, more so to philosophy, kind ofgets into this called Sophie’s world. It goes through many of the thoughts of what is humanly possible, what the human is, is there fate etc from different philosophical point of views.
What made me think of that was the apple question… in one part of the books it talks about the dad coming in for breakfast and flying around the table and the difference between the surprise of the mother, who believes such things shouldn’t be possible, and the lack of such surprise from the child who sees surprising stuff every day and doesn’t think that humans can’t just get up and fly is slightly less shocked.
Although I personally found the book slightly tedious just due to my personal taste in reading material, it is a good book giving some food for thought for anyone that’s interested.
To touch on belief I have to say where do you find the difference between what you believe in to be reality and what you believe in to be a delusion. For one to believe I feel that belief has to be in some part based in reality. But is reality what we make it? If so is reality then a delusion? As far as technique goes you have to have belief that your technique will work or it becomes as useless as lint in your pocket. Power or empowerment of ones tools, self, and area works along side the technique and belief of the spell and magick you practice. So in reality all three with a part of the other category is essential for all types of magick tho all three in one way or another can work on there own. I feel no matter what kind of magick you practice they are the prime ingredients for any thing you do.
My own research suggests that you can use a model similar to Peter Carroll’s “magical equation” published in Liber Kaos with a some modifications. The version I’ve come up over the years looks like this:
C = G * L * E * (1 – A) * (1 – R)
All of these variables range from 0 to 1.
C is the Casting Value, an overall measure of how perfectly the spell was performed.
G is Gnosis, the degree to which consciousness expands and shifts. L is the the quality of the Link to the target of the spell, either by similarity, contagion, or both. These are essentially the same as in Carroll’s equations.
E is the energetic state of the subtle body, which is related to phenomena such as that mentioned in the previous thread in which Tibetan yogis seem to build up some sort of bodily energy. Carroll ignores this, but it’s really important.
Carroll defines A as “Awareness,” in that he believes a magical operation has to be forgotten in order to work. That’s honestly pretty silly in my experience, but the A that you really need to watch out for is Attachment. If you are too caught up in whether or not a spell will succeed it won’t. I’m of the opinion that the “forgetting” trick is how Carroll gets around attachment in his own work, but I don’t find that method very optimal.
Finally, R is Resistance to the outcome of the spell. Carroll and I see this term differently, primarily because Carroll bases his work on the Freudian “subconscious mind” model that is currently in the process of being completely debunked by neuroscientists. He believes that there is a “psychic censor” located somewhere in the mind that is biased against working magick and which naturally creates R if it is not bypassed. I don’t believe that, but I do believe that R is created by ambivalence about the spell you are casting. For example, a lack of belief in your magical abilities can create R, as can the belief that you are somehow doing something you shouldn’t.
Once you have C for a specific operation, you multiply it by S, Magical Strength. This value is different for everyone and is based on a combination of natural ability and sustained daily magical practice. S is a number ranging from 1 to at least 100 or so that determines the biggest probability shift an individual magician can accomplish. A value of 1 means that the person in question has no real magical ability at all in that they cannot affect probabilities. A strength of 100 means that the magician can overcome odds of 100 to 1 against if the casting is perfect. C * S yields M, the Magical Effect
To determine the likelihood of a given magical action succeeding, add P, the natural probability of the event you are trying to cause, to M, the magical effect. If the odds of something happening are 1000 to 1 against and your M is 100, the result would be 1000 to 100 against or 10 to 1 against. Your spell may not succeed, but your odds of success are greatly increased.
In a group working, calculate M for each member of the group and add those values together for the total shift, keeping in mind that usually Gnosis drops a bit in group workings simply because some attention is required to coordinate the various participants.