User blogs

I have always found that the best spells, rituals, or whatever you prefer to call it, works best when you actually feel something. When the actions that you perform can make you feel something that you wouldn't normally feel. For me this usually comes in the form of a sensation that I call "The Quickening" which is stolen from Highlander, because why not? At the climax of the ritual I tend to feel odd sensations of heat, cold, tension, and relaxation in my extremities and face. I interpret this as a signal that the ritual has caused a significant emotional reaction in myself, significant enough to create what feels like an external effect. What is the point of magick if not to create effects in the real world, something outside of the mental machinations of creating and performing the spell.

Since I see the physical effect tied to emotional reactions as being important to the magickal action in question, it makes sense seek out various methods of causing powerful emotional and physiological reactions to harness for magickal purposes. It is my opinion that any form of physiological arousal is a tool to be used for any spell, especially if one has difficulty with creating any sort of feeling within themselves in the first place. While it is better to tailor the reaction to the particular spell used (feelings of hatred for a spell of destruction, sexual arousal for a spell of lust, feelings of pity and empathy for a spell of compassion), any emotion and the felt effects of that emotion in the body will do. The mind has a way of tying things together. If all you can feel is hatred, but all you think about is compassion, you can fuse the sensations of hatred to the intent of compassion. The feelings you arouse in a spell are the ammunition that you fire into the universe to accomplish your will.

There are many tools to use to create these physiological sensation. Orgasm, drugs, music, meditation, an incense are a few of the more common ones. A possible tool I don't think I have ever seen mentioned in discussions of spellwork is movies. Laughter, despair, disgust, sexual arousal, and violent excitement are just a few off the many emotions that can be triggered while watching a movie. These could then be channelled as the magician sees fit for his particular purposes.

A movie like August Underground: Mordum for example might cause intense feelings of disgust or fear. The magician could time the most offensive parts of the movie the casting of the spell, so that at the moment when they feel the most physiological arousal. Of course disgust and fear are not the only emotions that could be used, though they are those which I feel most often, so I find them useful for magickal work. 

If you take for a moment my operational definition of magic: "Any will/desire that starts in the brain, that is then created in objective reality." You can see that a great many things are effectively magical. Basically all human behaviour can enjoy the shade of this magical umbrella. But the more interesting forms of magic involve rituals that use aesthetics and art as a bridge from the mental version of the will to its physical manifestation on the objective plane of the universe. 

If you look at any martial arts club, from the nonsensical mystical bullshit taught in aikido to the primarily athletic, spectator sport martial art of western boxing, the trappings of magic and ritual are everywhere. Granted they are more obvious in many of the traditional asian martial arts, involving bowing, special clothes, meditation, and sometimes mantras. If you go to a boxing or mma gym, you can see many of the same categories of things, they just look superficially different. You see a lot of the same athletic gear like Everlast, Hayabusa, or Venum, worn to appease the martial spirits to be invoked. Or just to fit in. Or because those are high quality brands, and wearing a high quality brand will mean that you are a better fighter, at least in one's head at some level. 

Essentially all forms of martial arts or combat sports involve a preparatory period,  like striking the gong or lighting the incense in order to get the mind into the magical trance or mood necessary for spell-work. The preparatory period in the martial arts is a warm up, light exercises to prepare the body to get in to aroused state necessary to meet the upcoming demands of the workout or competition.

And then training happens. Much like a voodoo practictioner plunges needles into his poppet to destroy him, the kickboxer hits the heavy bag in preparation for the fight, simulating in as realistic a form as possible his opponent. The fighters who have teachers that keep current on the state of sports science are well aware of the utility of using visualization as a means to improve the skill of a fighters' techniques. Visualization of course is a time honoured tradition in many mystical and magical paths.

Each training session I argue is no different from a spell; what you do in the dojo is meant to make a certain outcome happen in the objective world. Some systems of martial arts utilize methods of training that are so byzantine that the outside observer can see little relation to that and the act of physical combat. Think of elaborate systems of choreographed movements, some of which are designed to improve woo woo as "chi". These fighters never let their spells come to fruition, their spells fail, for they seldom test their abilities in real life (at least I've found little evidence other than wild claims from their practitioners). 

If a truly devoted martial artist lifts weights and diets appropriately to further increase his performance in combat, this is the same thing: An act with absolutely no clear relation to the act of punching someone in the head until they fall down. Yet it cannot be denied that such fighters are those who in fact do defeat their opponents with the greatest skill and frequency, and if they chose could probably go into a crowded area and cause serious damage with nothing but their bodies. In other words, martial artists who have proven their ability through competition or street fights after casting their spells (years of training) are fucking wizards.