1: STATEMENT OF INTENT
“I desire this difference in this context for this purpose.”
Desire. You needn’t bother enchanting for something unless you actually want it. The magician part of you just won’t go for stuff it feels pointless or trivial. Also, if you feel yourself in two minds about what you want, the division will spoil the magic also. So come to some agreement with yourselfs over what you really want and desire it wholeheartedly.
Don’t ask for stupid stuff. I wouldn’t want to add to your own limiting beliefs, but you ain’t going to fly like Superman. Check that you genuinely feel that whatever you’re asking for seems a real possibility, or your magical mind will just dismiss it.
Difference. Clarify exactly what you want to get, not just ‘better,’ or ‘more money’. How much more? A penny? Also, The magician in you doesn’t understand negatives, ‘no’, ‘not that’, ‘don’t want,’ and may only hear what you ‘don’t want.’ So for your own sake express your desire in the positive only.
Describe to yourself what you would see, hear and experience happening as your desire comes to pass. Enter into this experience, use this exercise to check out whether you really want it as much as you thought. Also, this sensory data will let you know when you’ve got your desire.
Context. While doing the exercise above, just ask yourself, where would I like to see this? When? Time limit? Around what people? In what surroundings and in what event?
Purpose. Distinguish between means and ends. You might want more money. Call that the means. Now ask, ‘If I already had the money’, what would that make possible in my life?’ Get an answer, like ‘security’, for example. Call that an end. Then go, ‘If I already had security, what would that in turn make possible for me?’ And so on, until you quickly hit a point where words fail you but you feel something deep and amazing. Call that your ultimate end. Consider it an altered state in itself and a resource for magic.
2: MAGUFFIN
To use Hitchcock's word for the little trick that made the plot turn, you need a belief that your mind will accept as the 'reason' for your magic working. As kids, we had no trouble seeing a staircase as a mountain, or a doll as a living person, the back garden as a jungle, cartoon characters as personal friends. So by all means, in a spirit of playfulness, seek the Knowledge and Conversation of Yogi Bear for help with a laid-back attitude to life, or as I am at this time of writing, learn Proto-Indo-European roots to find ancient (and therefore authentic, honestly!) magic words for use in ritual. Look to your models of magic and focus on something that might work for you. If you think Carl Jung's theories of Collective Unconscious and archetypes have a point, use them. If you despise the frivolity of pop psychology and wish to have The Truth, find one and have utter faith in it (at least during your working. The Truth, nice to visit, too small to live in).
A final point on the Maguffin: choose something as relevant as possible to your Intent.
3: BANISHING
This simply means clearing your ritual space of unwanted atmosphere, influences or thoughts (your ritual space includes yourself). Whether you do a full Qabalistic jobbie with archangels and crosses of light, or simply clap your hands and listen to the echo off the walls, you open the space for the magical ritual to come. And enter the mindset of your Maguffin.
4: ENERGIZING BREATHING
Whether a short breathing exercise or a pattern of breathing that you maintain throughout the ritual, this primes your pump, raising your own bodily awareness and preparing the whole you for action. Qigong, pranayama, and others all provide handy examples to choose from.
5: ALTERED STATE
Obviously, the gentle trance of a pathworking to visit your astral quiet place differs a bit from the altered state for a successful possession by a Voodoo god. Some sorceries seem to demand total loss of sense of self-awareness, some don’t. But all require states markedly different from the ordinary waking one, states with no internal dialogue. No altered state, no magic.
Inhibitory states include meditative trances, Alpha state, half-sleep, exhaustion. Excitatory states include highly agitated emotions, sexual excitement, pain and whatever else it takes to ‘lose it.’ And of course, shamans and witch doctors through the ages have got such effects from drugs.
6: VIZUALIZATION
Across traditions, visualization makes up the crucial element of realising your desires. Make pictures in your mind, whether of the scenes you saw when you were designing your statement of intent, or a symbol or sigil of your desire, or of any concepts or entities which you might wish to employ to give your magic the necessary boost, whether you’re visiting the Lady Brigantia for a favour or firing magically charged lightning bolts into a talisman or whatever. You must, though, include a sense or even an overt picture of your desire having come to pass. Avoid visualising the problem or whatever, as that doesn’t belong in your intent anyway. Positives only, remember?
That said, if you’re vizualizing a sigil so as to avoid reminding yourself of the intent of the ritual, you should stick with the sigil.
7: POSTURE
You will necessarily have a posture, so you may as well choose it in keeping with the ritual. Sitting meditations provide few challenges here, but aggressive or soldierly postures obviously suit an invocation of Mars, for example.
8: GESTURE & MOVEMENT
Why settle for just standing to attention when invoking Mars? You could march, salute, mime holding a weapon (unless you’ve got your own, of course. Props. Use ‘em). When you visualise, say, secret wisdom in front of you, physically reach out with your arms to grab it and pull it into you. Clap your hands, stamp your feet, point, draw things in the air. Physically walk across the space to where the magic sword is waiting for you to get both hands around it and heave it out of the stone. Your magical bodymind knows what you’re doing then.
9: WORD(S) & SOUNDS
Find words that express your statement of intent. Use that statement itself, even. Or, if you don’t want to remind yourself of it, jumble the words of your statement of intent into a meaningless mantra and get lost in the recitation of it. Find a meaningless sound that helps you get the feel of your desire. Compose whole prayers in magical tongues. Sing, even if you can’t. Play drums or something. Whatever reflects the ritual and its intent. Whatever helps to intensify the altered state.
10: CLOSE & LEAVE ALONE
You’ve been dutifully visualising your desire having come to pass, and at some point you may have reached a sense of ‘it’s done. My ritual’s cooked and the results are practically on the table.’ So stop. Close the space. Use a banishing perhaps. Some people sometimes close by forcing themselves to laugh out loud until they’ve laughed off the altered state. Try it. Reflecting on the absurdity of your chosen Maguffin can have you rolling on the floor. If you’ve raised a lot of energy in your ritual, you may want to ground it by lying down and breathing deeply, or eating something, or projecting it into Mother Earth. Your call.
Avoid dwelling on the ritual or the intent. Leave it alone. Here while you cultivate expectancy that your desire will indeed manifest, you should cultivate confidence enough to consider it done so that you can pass on to other things.
HOW TO USE THIS INFORMATION
Using this stuff represents a big step. Most people content themselves with reading about magic and miss out on the benefits. Magic does not solve all our problems; indeed, it creates more problems, but we like to think that with magic we can experience a better class of problems.
While we expect these notes to aid those relatively new to the practice of magic, we hope that the not-so-new can have fun inventing unusual combinations of the above ingredients.
Grab a pen and paper and draw up a statement of intent, along the lines of “I desire this difference in this context for this purpose.” Nice and short. Go through as much of the exercises in (1) as you feel you need.
With that first and most important ingredient sorted out, we can now get cooking. Go through numbers (2)-(10), choosing some examples that you can conveniently do. Try to choose altered states, banishings and so on that go nicely together. That said, a Qabalistic Banishing Ritual followed by an invocation of Charlie Chaplin will add to the humour of the rite very appropriately. And of course, jot down roughly what you’re going to do as an aid to memory.
Keep it all simple.
Arrange how you will know when to do what. Plan, have someone to lead, use signals, whatever.
Assure yourself of the necessary privacy, and get started.
Starters: Banish, announce your statement of intent, do your energizing breathing. Experiment doing these in different orders.
Main Course: Enter altered state, adding the visualization, posture, gesture, movement, words and sounds that you prepared earlier.
Dessert: Close and leave alone. And so it is done. Enjoy.
