This is gonna be long. buckle in.
So let me first address the big thing:
yes, literal magick is real. yes, things like sigils can make it so that you can find money on the ground. I've accomplished intents like finding fast money, and the next day i found both a $50 bill AND a $20 on the ground in the same evening. Literally in the most unlikely of ways, it was crazy.
So this tells me, anybody who tells you that magick is "purely psychological"(meaning it doesnt affect anything outside of your apparent body) is either weak-willed, ignorant, misguided, or trying to suppress your abilities for whatever reason. Straight up.
Remember that reddit is an open forum, so all KINDS of people with no standard training can just waltz in here anytime and say anything they want, on top of the fact that they filter their opinions with strong biases. If I would've listened to all the close-minded fools, I would've never learned what I learned. I had to become confident in my own ability & had to learn to not give a fuck about anybody else if i wanted to experience the truth for myself.
The only person who can confirm all this is you, and its through your power alone that you find the Truth in yourself. Why do you think so many powerful spiritual figures in history went through a "hermit" stage where they isolated themselves from everybody & went off to mediate in a cave for years? because the nature of the real Truth is hidden IN you. Yes, conceptual frameworks can help guide you, but the REAL truth? its unspoken. its not something that can be "figured out" intellectually with other ignorant people. Eventually, once you reach a certain point, you have to not give a fuck what Aleister Crowley, Peter Carroll, Don M. Kraig, or even what S. Buddha said, and realize the taste of the truth experientially for yourself, to the point that its unmistakable what it is.
but you have to genuinely be open-minded to discovering it. Tilopa, one of the master founders of Mahamudra Buddhism, and a powerful mahasiddha, gave his Six Precepts of Advice for starting your path to finding the truth:
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Don't recall. Let go of what has passed [mi mno]
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Don't imagine. Let go of what may come [mi bsam]
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Don't think. Let go of what is happening now [mi sems]
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Don't examine. Don't try to figure anything out [mi dpyod]
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Don't control. Don't try to make anything happen [mi sgom]
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Rest. Relax, right now, and rest [rang sar bzhag]
When you genuinely let go of all the ignorant conditioning thats been hammered into you, the Truth starts to appear and you can see the nature of reality for what it REALLY is.
Now, here's the thing about magick:
I've noticed many people tend to ask whether their spell "worked" or "not." this implies a duality. and it also implies a misunderstanding of magick and the nature of experience.
The truth is, all is mind. This is how magick is possible in the first place. All you have is mind and all youll ever have is your mind. For all eternity. thats the only way youll ever experience anything; is you experience it IN your mind. The true you isnt a "body"; the true you is an unborn "mind-being", made of awareness. But because the nature of mind isnt obvious to itself, your true-self (mind) has ignorantly mistaken itself for its mental formations that appear in its scope (think of what happens when you fall into a fluid "dream" every night; your mind ignorantly mistakes mental formations to be "true" all the time & conditions itself into self-fulfilling prophecies. it ends up thinking its the body that appears infront of it because it conditions itself to believe its a singular self in relation to its other mental appearances that SEEM separate from it. but theyre all just one big mental projection. including the body. no matter how dense and vivid they may seem, its all still illusion. there's nothing that says an illusion cant have structure and density to it. You just gotta see thru it.)
Now, why is this important? because everything you experience is literally a mind state. Any emotion, mode of perception, any action you take, is a mind state. This includes the act of a "spell" happening within your mind's scope. When you intend a spell, youre not "reaching out" and using some kind of external "energy". its you, as a mind-being, changing your experiential state to appear as if your spell is true.
Now what do we know about mind-states? Theyre not "on-and-off" things if you really examine them.
Take the state of being angry: when youre angry, you dont just switch from "not-angry" to "angry". Becoming more angry is like a "rising;" you can feel your bodyheat rising by degrees when you get more angry. its gradual. And when you try to calm down, you notice it takes time. SLOWLY, you calm down.
And THIS is the keyword: "degrees". any state of being is in DEGREE--a measurement along a gradient. and this includes your "spell-state". the state of your spell is measured in degrees of its vividness. its up to you to determine whether its satisfactory or not.
Now lets say youre someone with a relatively weak-will: this basically means your magickal intentions are clouded by your other "mind-stuff" that you let get out of control: self-doubt, self-deprecation, your beliefs about the world, etc. These things become persistent patterns that become hard to uproot. all these thoughtforms play a part in how your spell turns out, and how you experience life (& this is the unfortunate part that many people struggle with: all the "bad things" that happened are a result of your mind; like nightmares. you didnt necessarily "intend" for them to happen, they were simply the side-effects of ignorance & unconscious habit. its unfortunate, but reality can be ugly. but taking responsibility for this is what transformed my life. i promise im not saying this out of spite).
Why do you think meditation is always recommended? because so many's people's minds are clouded with contradictory, harmful intents.
But this is what many dont realize: if magick is a result of mind, and mind is always working, then this means magick is always working. When you get up from your altar & your meditation mat, your mind is still holding beliefs about the world. so yes, you may have very well reached some degree of gnosis during a ritual, but after you got through with your ritual, and you essentially fell back to your old ways of thinking, you ended up with a shitty magick result.
this is why people may intend to find a $10 bill, but because the intensity of the "its hard for me to get money"-thoughtform is stronger than the "i find $10 bills"-thoughtform, then your spell-state becomes less intense , and you end up with a weak result : like seeing a $10 bill on an instagram post or something like that. Its also why many people dont instantly "get rich" from magick, even if theyve successfully casted spells before. they may still have some degree of disbelief that they could achieve ALOT of wealth. Their current conditioning may only allow them to have "decent" wealth, not alot. There are degrees to wealth, and there are degrees to cherophobia.
So technically, your spell worked, HOWEVER, subjectively, you didnt find this result satisfactory. so you decide to say "it didnt work". but technically, it did work, but the DEGREE of your intent was too weak to be satisfactory for YOU personally.
So what is needed to change this?
Contemplation. The old-fashioned "hard work" aspect of becoming a successful occultist. You have to do hard self-reflective work to uproot self-defeating thoughtforms. gradually, overtime, softening them, bit by bit, until they become so weak that your spell-states are more intense than them, and you essentially become someone who doesnt even need to do a whole ritual; you just make magick happen like its nothing. it becomes part of who you are.
This means going to therapy; maybe seeing a psychiatrist; taking your meds; forcing yourself to change bad habits; cleaning your room; taking time to exercise and eating a healthier diet, etc. Get out more often and actually talk to people (with a mask on now), and stop trying to summon succubeses and incubeses like a dumbass. Force yourself to develop healthier relationships. Study people who overcame the odds & became successful. Contemplate on the nature of reality & stop seeing yourself as a mere "lump of flesh". Seriously reflect on these things. Gain insight about your psychology. Change who you are. THEN you can get real serious with the more "obvious" occult practices. because if you dont work to improve yourself, youre wasting your time, and could potentially hurt yourself.
If you want to jump start this, TRUST ME: Shrooms are one of THEEEE best ways to jumpstart this. theyve been scientifically proven to change your brain in ways that reduces self-defeating habits. see the r/shrooms subreddit for more info.
this may seem "mundane", but if all is mind, then there is no true separation of things; the "mundane" is actually "spiritual" and the "spiritual" is actually "mundane". thats why i've stopped using the words "spiritual" vs "physical". all appearances are simply phenomenological formations of "something", with different degrees of vividness & intensity.
But once again, my words are simply a conceptual framework. if you dont agree.. oh well. but if they resonated with you, then simply use these words as tools to guide you to the REAL truth: the Truth beyond words. the Infinite Gradient of experience. Its already in you.
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Thanks again for allowing me to bring voice to your wonderful words.
and hey,
Thanks for hangin.
