How Magic Works

"To him who concerns himself with Alchemy. May Nature, Reason, Experience, and Reading be guide, staff, spectacles, and lantern." - Michael Maier

Getting started in magic can be very confusing. Getting results from magic can be almost impossible, especially for the individual who has not been taught the procedure for making magic work the way it was intended.

This problem becomes compounded when you realize that you may not even know what type of results were actually intended by the spell you are working.

Other questions then tend to pop up:

  • How soon can I expect to see results?
  • What can I expect to happen?
  • Will I lose my mind from doing this?
  • What is “magical energy”?
  • Why do I need to do the spell in "X" order or with "X" ingredient?
  • Will it still work if I can’t do X?
  • Hell, What IS a RESULT?

There’s a lot of material, it seems, to wade through when getting started. In truth there’s only a few things you need to know, the first is to know your purpose or the reasons you seek spiritual work. This will give you a clear idea of the types of exercises to practice.

In general a good set of practices to start with is to simply ask for a Blessing from your spirits, guides, benevolent helpers, etc. and learning spiritual cleansing, both the physical and emotional components.

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A spell attributed to Marie Laveau gives a solid set of practices to get started with, here’s the quote:
Maries Laveau's Advice to Beginners

So here’s the Cliffs Notes:

  1. Get a "Lucky Hand." (Lucky Mojo Bag) (We’ll talk about what she means by luck later)
    • Feed it with Master oil on Fridays
  2. Take a spiritual bath once a week w/ Special Oil #20
  3. Perform a deep spiritual bath with St. Cyprian oil once a month & powder w/uncrossing
    • The morning after powder yourself with uncrossing powder and wear master oil
  4. Spiritual House Cleansing monthly (do this regularly)
  5. Keep an all purpose candle going and give thanks for your blessing

Once you’ve gotten comfortable with this set of practices you can do condition work to fix various problems in your life.

The only thing I would add here is to learn some divination skills as well (not necessarily prognostication), but that can be on going. There’s two highly recommended practices:

  1. The pendulum first and foremost
  2. Card Reading (tarot, playing cards, oracles etc)

Here’s where the problems start.

Over the next few pages I’ll walk you through a bit of the theoretical foundation which informs my answers to some of those questions above. You’ll see that some of the answers are not nearly as straight forward as some teachers represent them to be.

We’re also going to start at the beginning, because I have a somewhat different attitude about magical work than your average hermit.

So, if you’re ready, let’s begin.

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