An act of magic does not begin only upon the release of the cone of power, the empowerment of the sigil, the charging of the talisman or spirit-aid.\u00a0 An act of magic does not begin with the casting of the circle.\u00a0 It does not even begin with the purifying bath before the ritual begins.\u00a0 An act of magic begins the moment you set your will to an end, and echoes, still, after you achieve your result.<\/p>\n
This is a thing that, I think, we all know, but which we all forget.<\/p>\n
This is why, if you plan your rituals thoroughly or even just a few days in advance, you begin to see results before you have charged your sigils or talismans, or even finished arranging your correspondences.\u00a0 I find that this is particularly common with multi-stage rituals, or when you’re doing magic for other people: frequently, Aradia’s mother will ask her to enchant for something, and then receive it while the offering candles are still burning.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, you don’t even need to follow through with the ritual.\u00a0 I think this is what a lot of people are talking about when they say they “manifested” something, but then get dodgy when you ask about their technique.\u00a0 This is, interestingly, one the phenomena I have seen scare people away from magic in their earliest experiments.\u00a0 (When my sister gave me back the magic books I had lent and bought her, she told me with wide-eyed terror about how, when she wanted things, “they just happened!”)<\/p>\n
Conversely, when you are attempting something particularly difficult – an exorcism was the example that came up Gordon’s recent podcast interview with Jenny McCarthy – you can begin to encounter resistance as soon as you declare your intent.\u00a0 Personally, I find this phenomenon most pervasive with my social justice magic: the apathy and depression which beset me when I begin to contemplate how best to undermine the structures of Archonic power; the mind-numbing blank, so much worse than normal writers block, which I struggle against when I attempt to work on my hypersigil novels; the reflexive planning-stage push-back I get from people who were down for the cause until the moment I announced I would actually take action.<\/p>\n
I know a great number of magical people who rely too heavily on the first two of these three phenomena.\u00a0 They are accustomed to the path opening for them effortlessly.\u00a0 They mistake effective magic for destiny and, as a result, take every obstacle they do<\/em> encounter as a cosmic DO NOT ENTER sign.\u00a0 These are the same people who spend their lives wondering, “what am I supposed to do?” and flinch at the question, “what do I want?”<\/p>\n Linear time and causality are the meat and bread of historians, but they are illusions of mortal consciousness.\u00a0 We are witches and sorcerers and magicians and priest\/esses.\u00a0 We are subject to illness and doomed to die, but in all other regards we disdain the limits of mortality.\u00a0 The past pushes.<\/em>\u00a0 The future pulls.<\/em>\u00a0 Things outside of time – ourselves included – stir the pot.<\/p>\n Sometimes, of course, we do encounter DO NOT ENTER signs.\u00a0 And sometimes we should even heed them.<\/p>\n But we are witches.\u00a0 We are sorcerers.\u00a0 We are wizards.\u00a0 We are priests and priestesses and healers and mystics.\u00a0 We are crossers of the hedge, climbers of the World Tree, explorers of the astral realms.\u00a0 We are dabblers in forces forbidden to mortals.\u00a0 We are possessors of knowledge others fear to face.<\/p>\n If we have any ambition at all, the obstacles we face become challenges which must be surmounted or circumnavigated.\u00a0 We must set banquet tables for strange gods, even if we must then strangle them in their sleep.\u00a0 We must slay or subdue or even seduce the dragons.<\/p>\n When you set out on a quest, the resistance you face is pro often of that you are going in the right direction.\u00a0 Take solace in the stretches of easy, open road, and rest when you can.\u00a0 And don’t take every challenge personally.\u00a0 But remember that some of the obstacles arose in opposition to your intention; crush them and use the rubble as stepping stones.<\/p>\n And when you see a DO NOT ENTER sign on a side path, consider that it might be a challenge to be accepted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An act of magic does not begin only upon the release of the cone of power, the empowerment of the sigil, the charging of the talisman or spirit-aid.\u00a0 An act of magic does not begin with the casting of the circle.\u00a0 It does not even begin with the purifying bath before the ritual begins.\u00a0 An … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,5],"tags":[149,222,258],"class_list":["post-3203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-witchcraft","tag-magic","tag-ritual-timing","tag-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-PF","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}