We all come from different paths, traditions, schools, but there are certain things that most of us do (or, at least, are told that we should do) when we begin our magical practice. Meditation. Divination. Journaling. We are taught (and teach) that these are the foundations upon which a mature magical practice is built.
I think that many of us, however — whether you started young, like me, or later in life — somehow get the impression that we will graduate beyond these things. That meditation will be replaced by ecstatic trance. That divination will become redundant as we enchant for the future we want. That journaling will become irrelevant as we perfect our arts and come to believe in ourselves. And, even as we grow and learn and come to know better, these fundamentals all fall by the wayside at times.
Speaking for myself, however, once I’ve lost track of those fundamentals, I find that my practice as a whole is likely to decline soon after. I grow complacent. I begin studying magic more than I practice it. The contentment and satisfaction that I achieved with my magical practice fade into apathy and complacency.
When that happens, it’s time to go back to the basics.
This week, I began a new tarot study: a card every day with The Wild Unknown (a beautiful deck I was gifted for my birthday or Christmas two or three years ago but which never made it in to my regular rotation). I am also making time for regular meditation: two or three times this week, four or five next week, every day the week after.
This is not my first rodeo. I have fallen off the horse and gotten back on before. I had to start practically from scratch after giving myself magically induced migraines in my early twenties. Later, when Aradia and I met, we were both at a low point in our practices, and joined Chirotus (and a few others) in a back-to-basics group. We started with Christopher Penczac’s Temple of Witchcraft books (no links and no respect so long as he remains close friends with Christian Day) and eventually escalated into the Pseudo-Coven before imploding (have I ever told that story all in one place?). I’ve had to go back to basics (with less dramatic causes and results) on a couple occasions since, as well.
Every time I do a back-to-basics course, I am confronted with the same lesson: the baiscs are not training wheels, they are fundamentals. As a jeweler, the first things I was taught were how to wield the hammer, how to file and polish, how to solder. Every single jewelry task I have done in the following twenty years has used those skills. Magic is no different.
Meditation has a host of physiological and psychological benefits on its own. Additionally, it is the seed of nearly every other trance induction technique you will ever attempt. If you want to learn to do visionary work or astral projection or candle magic or charge sigils or conjure spirits, you will be well served by getting good and staying good at meditation.
Divination is not just about “do they like me” or “how will this job interview go” (as useful as those can be). It’s not just “what will today/this month/this year reveal for me?” It is also learning to sit and listen and hear things that you didn’t expect or didn’t want to know. Divination is (or should be) used as a safety precaution before enchantments and conjurations. It can also be used as a way to communicate with spirits, for those of us who don’t have the “godphone” built in.
Journaling helps us keep track of the details. Human memory is deeply fallible. Journaling regularly helps you remember what happened, and helps keep your adventures from growing or diminishing with retelling. It helps you spot patterns over long periods of time.
Learn from my fail: go back to the basics every couple years even if your practice hasn’t flagged. I promise that you will find something new and valuable in your core materials that you had missed or dismissed. You will probably also find things that you now violently reject, and that’s worth knowing you.
As your practices grow and change, you will find yourself adding to the list of fundamentals. For myself, that means two things: visionary journeys and planetary conjurations. I, and my magic, are at our best when I am doing journeywork and planetary work on the regular. Despite some of the truly spectacular things I have accomplished in the six years since I came back to Kansas City, I have not been as consistently potent as I was in the Sunrise Temple, when I was doing my original planetary conjurations during the week, and performing the Stele of Jeu and descending to the underworld every full and dark moon.
As such, come Monday, I will begin a new series of planetary rituals — starting on Monday and working through the planets in the Chaldean order as recommended by Rufus Opus‘ Seven Spheres. Rather than performing conjurations as described by RO, however, I believe that I will ascend the spheres and attempt to renew my spirit contacts, particularly with the Moon and Venus.
So empowered (one hopes), I will be fortified to escalate my practice, rejoining the work I began in Jack Grayle’s PGM class (which fell somewhat to the wayside due to quarantine depression) and joining the August round of Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole’s Do Magick Challenge.
