Real magick is not merely an assortment of skills and techniques.
It’s more like an open minded attitude, a blend of interest and dedication,
which allows each honest mage to observe, to learn, to adapt,
and to invent unique ways of changing identity and reality from within.

~ Jan Fries ~

PART 2: THE PRINCIPLES OF MAGICK

A fair amount of the correspondence we get at Spirit Walk Ministry comes from individuals who either want us to provide them with some magick spell or symbol or for instructions on how they can perform some magick incantation or ritual themselves. These request cause us much consternation, much in the same way that Martin Luther  was driven to despair by the early Church’s selling of indulgences to frightened people who were willing to engage in divine bribery in a desperate attempt to buy off forces that they could neither understand nor control.  

There are many misconceptions about being able to buy magick spells. There are thousands of websites out there selling spells, potions and other knickknacks to desperate people looking for a quick and easy way to achieve the result of having someone fall in love with them  or to extract revenge on an enemy.  Sadly, this is often the level of importance of the events that many individuals wish to use magick spells to affect the outcome of.   

But, these results cannot be bought, for as with the power of prayer, the power of magic spells comes primarily form the true intent and sincerity of the “petitioner” rather than from the recital of words from some missal of rituals and incantations.

Some "magickians", like artist and writer Alan Moore believe that any act of creation is an act of magick and that Michelangelo sculpting “David” was as much a magickal act as any spell work. Michelangelo himself said he did not sculpt “David” but “released him” from the marble, which implies he himself saw that “ART IS MAGICK”.



 Ultimately, there is no difference between spells and prayers. …
In prayer, you engage your ability to direct attention (create reality)
by treating this creative power you have as an external thing that can be prayed to,
and thereby engage the unconscious magick of self-fulfilling prophecy,
which is ultimately simply directing your attention, just like casting a spell is.
In spell casting, you do not treat this creative power as an external thing
to be supplicated, but rather take charge as the creator yourself,
using reminders or mental triggers to get yourself to direct your attention
in a particular way, which is exactly what you are doing when you pray.
The difference is only in the way you view yourself, the author of the universe:
a) in prayer, as something external that you can supplicate or
b) in spell-casting, taking charge and owning
 the power and responsibility of reality creation. 

 ~ Mer-Amun ~

While many practitioners of true magick (or paranormal magick) speak of the power of magick being embodied in the rather ambiguous concept of “the three fold law”, which states that whatever energy a person puts out into the world, be it positive or negative, will be returned to that person three times over, what may be the more truthful description of the power of magick is simply that "you will get out of it what you put into it", for every magickal act is done as if in a mirror and you cannot escape that reflection, be it one of light or of darkness. 

Some try to separate the power of magick into two opposing camps, "white magick" and "black magick", the former magick being magick rituals used for good and the latter being other magickal rituals used for evil, but that is also a misconception.

It is not the ritual itself that is good or evil, but the intent with which the ritual is invoked. This can be seen with what happened with the transmundane symbol of the “swastika”.  The Tibetan Swastika is a very ancient and powerful symbol of good luck, prosperity and victory.  Revered by Buddhist and others, the classic Tibetan Swastika faced left, or counter-clockwise, though images of the swastika facing the opposite way originally still held the same positive meaning.  When Hitler and the Nazis Party later adopted the swastika as the symbol of their movement, reversing the direction of the symbol to face right or clock-wise, the image then came to be associated with evil. But the power of the symbol to manifest good or evil lies not in the symbol itself, but in the intent of those who use it to invoke its power. 

.

Apotropaic magick or protective magick is a type of magick intended to turn away evil influences, as in deflecting misfortune or averting the evil eye. Apotropaic observances may also be practiced out of superstition or out of tradition, as in good luck charms. amulets, or gestures such as crossed fingers or knocking on wood. The Greeks made offerings to the "averting gods", chthonic deities and heroes who grant safety and deflect evil.

The employment of symbols in magick has been expanded in recent years, especially in the internet age. In chaos magick, a highly misunderstood contemporary magickal practice, a type of pictorial signature of a demon or other entity, referred to as a a sigil, becomes a symbolic representation of the cybermancer's desired manifestation.

(A proper usage of the term "chaos magick", especially as related to the cybemancer, would indicate a result based on the "chaos theory" (the science of surprises) which states that seemingly trivial and unrelated events could alter the outcome of the magickal spell the practitioner intended. Perhaps even eliminating the magickal practitioner's desire for the outcome before the spell manifests.)

With the proliferation of the internet a new form of "cyber sigil" has been made manifest in the form of the "meme"'.  An Internet meme is an activity, concept, catchphrase or piece of media that gains popularity and spreads rapidly via the Internet. An Internet meme is often helped along by social networking sites and blogs that post and repost popular memes and, in doing so, reinforce the popularity and power of the memes.

 "Meme Magick" is a term used to describe the hypothetical power of sorcery and magick  derived from certain internet memes that can transcend the realm of cyberspace and result in real life consequences. Some have compared it to the transmundane concept of the egregore, an autonomous psychic entity which influences the thoughts of a group of people.

Nothing is of its nature evil, and nothing is of its nature good.
Evil is only excess, good is simply balance. All things are subject to abuse.
All things are susceptible to beneficial use.
And balance does not consist in denial, or excess of indulgence. 

~ John Whiteside Parsons ~

AND … if your mind is moving toward the idea of increasing your magickal power by “sacrificing”  the neighbor’s cat on the altar you have set up in your parent’s basement, then let us dispel another misconception about the principle of magick; the spilling of blood is a not an integral part of the manifestation of magick.  

The concept of “blood sacrifice” as a part of religious ritual goes back to the dawn of mankind.  Since blood represents life, it is believed in many religions that by offering up blood or using blood in some rituals, it has the power of passing on this principle of life, giving power to protect, heal and create. Even in today’s modern Christian churches the concept of drinking the blood of Jesus to bring the worshipper closer to him is still an integral part of the faith and the manifestation of "miracles".  

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist whose contribution to science was the theory of a great cosmic mind known as the “cosmic or universal consciousness”, saw the matter differently. Jung theorized that potentials for creation are actualized when they enter the consciousness as images. Meaning the mind is programmed to receive certain potentials, thoughts, or ideas and there are patterns in place in the consciousness which can then release the innate energy of that consciousness which is then channeled from the perceived into a manifestation of the actual, devoid of any morally subjective judgment of being either good or evil.

Yes, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force.
But beware of the dark side.
Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they.
Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight.
If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny,
consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice.

~ Yoda ~

 .

In short, when the human mind is stimulated by images it is capable of manifesting a new reality, drawn from the human psyche itself .  Jung maintained that these archetypal images excite the psyche into a ecstatic or shamanic state of consciousness, thus creating the energy for the manifetation of magick (or miracles) within the framework of the universal cosmic mind. It would therefore seem that a more viable idea of “sacrifice” in this context might be something of more personally self-empowering nature to attain that ecstacy like spiritual cleansing through fasting, rather than torturing and killing some other poor creature.  

In summation,  Jung's theory holds that as the energy at the heart of true magickal power is channeled through the individual's own psyche, the basic potential for the manifestation to be subjectively either good or evil is largely dependent on the individual's intentions  instead of being the result of the performance of any one particular ritual. As such, in theory the type of rain you get, be it enough to water your crops or enough to flood your enemy’s farm, would depend on the type of intentions you put into the rain dance and not the type of rain dance ritual you performed in and of itself. It is therefore your ultimate responsiblity for the manifestations of your energy and your decision how to use the magick you weave, for good or evil, either as  a Luke Skywalker or a Darth Vader.

As for giving in to the dark side and using magick to “curse” or “hex” someone; curses are real and people do place them on one another, although it is fairly rare that they are ever powerful enough to do much harm, in and of themselves. The real serious damage done by curses comes much less directly and much more sinisterly.

As mentioned earlier, a fair amount of the correspondence we get at Spirit Walk Ministry comes from individuals wanting to know about magickal spells and curses because they are convinced someone has cursed them as a result of some unfortunate event that has occurred in their life. The vast majority of the time it is because someone, claiming to have the power to know this, has told them that they have been cursed.

It is very easy to dismiss this by saying the “victim” is paranoid and should not be scared by this.  But, let’s face it, we all have feelings of guilt about something and sometimes that guilt makes us feel that perhaps we deserve to be cursed. That is a weakness we all have and it is the doorway through which the unscrupulous may enter. It may be some psychic trying to scam money from you or some religious zealot trying to convert you to their way of thinking by telling them they are under attack from Satan and need to be saved. 

This is not magick at work; this is a PSYCHIC ATTACK !

As bad as these examples may be, the most evil of the all are the individuals whose sick and twisted motive is to destroy others psychically and emotionally for the perverse pleasure they derive from torturing others or even to feed, like energy vampires, off the pain they inflict.  

Do not take this lightly, as a psychic attack can cause far more damage, far more easily, than any curse or curse could. The negative energy of that attack becomes part of your energy field setting up a continual cycle of psychic torture and pain within the victim, while the perpetrators themselves fall ever deeper into the darkness from which they themselves may never escape. In the end, getting out of “their” magick, what they put in and they cannot escape the image they have cast for themselves in the Cosmic Mirror. 

 ©John Reder 

 Introduction: Traditional Magick

Part 1: The Tradition of Magick

Part 3: The Science of Magick