The No Bullshit Approach To
Magick
by Jeffrey Pierce

Let's talk magick.

The first thing that you need to understand - and I mean, really understand - when approaching magick is that you're not who you think you are. Almost all of us think of ourselves as "fill in the blank." For instance, if someone came up to me and said, "Who are you?" my answer would most likely be, "I'm Jeffrey Pierce."

However, from a magickal perspective, my answer is not accurate.

We're trained to think of life as a linear line from Point A to Point B. The deeper flow of reality doesn't function that way, a concept that quantum physicists have come to embrace. Rather than hit you with specific rules to learn, I'm going to draw a broad framework for you to rely on. It's not only much easier to remember, but in nearly every situation you face it is just as effective as understanding the minutia.

The first thing you must do if you want to work accurate magick is to shift your perspective because the "A to B" perspective is just as useless in magick as it is in accurately answering the question, "Who are you?" from a mystical perspective.

Who Are You?

If you were to leave your body behind and step onto a cosmic stage where you could see all of reality, you would understand that you are much more than a simple carbon-based life form living out a single lifetime. While this is mind-boggling for some of us, the farther in we go the harder it becomes to comprehend our true identity from our limited perspective.

Most of us are capable of taking the next step - of understanding that we're spiritual beings experiencing reality from a physical perspective. In other words, our soul (or spirit or energy - whatever you choose to call it) is what is important and it existed before this lifetime and will continue to exist after this lifetime. This perspective offers us the valuable insight that we choose our lessons and that the educational process that is implied in that concept is important to us on a scale that is much larger than this moment or even this lifetime.

However, that perspective is also limited.

The next step in the process is to understand that we are truly divine, a unique expression of the sacred, intensely powerful in our own right. For many of us, that's about the limit of where we're able to go, the concept more of an idea that we can roll around in our head, but not something that we can feel and truly live.

And there are countless steps beyond that.

Why bring all of this up in a lesson on magick?

Because we tend to approach magick from a linear perspective: "If I do A then B will be the result." And to be perfectly honest, if spiritual reality doesn't work that way, then our magickal workings don't work that way either.

No spell is self-contained; no working exists in a bubble; no binding influences only the person that it is focused on. Ever. There are no exceptions to this, not because I believe in a school of philosophy that says it’s that way, but because of the way that reality is structured. To believe otherwise is as flawed as me saying that, "I am Jeffrey Pierce," is an accurate depiction of who I am in the scope of spiritual reality.

How Magick Works

How does magick work? No one knows. Seriously. There are all kinds of theories; I even have one of my own that I rather like. However, if we have an imperfect understanding of the greater scope of reality, then there simply isn't any way of accurately detailing how magick works. Anyone who says otherwise is blind or misguided.

However, we can intuit a handful of useful principles and approaches based on non-biased observation.

When we work magick, we inadvertently direct our focus at more than one target. As a general rule of thumb, I make the assumption that the working will hit at least three places, which is often verifiable. In reality, our working will most likely hit numerous targets beyond those three which are too subtle for us to perceive or comprehend. Hitting multiple targets, most of them unintended, has nothing to do with sloppy spellwork or a lack of skill on the part of the person working the rite. It is simply because of the nature of reality. We don't live in a linear physical reality where everything is self-contained; we live in an interwoven spiritual reality where "All is One." It boggles the mind that so many practitioners are taught, "You can target a single outcome with your spellwork, defying natural laws on every level of reality." For magick to work, it must work with reality, not against it. It's not an argument, it's a simple application of natural laws - such as how airflow and a certain shape of wing can provide lift to an airplane, but a very different wing shape won't allow that same fuselage to get off the ground.

One of those multiple targets we hit with our working - without exception - is ourselves. It's where the entire concept of Wicca's "Threefold Law" came from. At the core of the concept isn't some form of karmic retribution, but rather the principle of "All Is One." If you and I are the same, how do I do something hurtful to you without harming myself? Likewise, even if I don't like you, if I work a rite to bring more love into your life, because All is One, that spell is going to spill love into my world as well.

Working Magick

As a general rule, if you can influence an event through mundane means, do so. Period. Sure, it sucks to dig in and get scraped and dirty, but that's how you grow. If you end up falling on your face, you develop wisdom and perspective. It's a win/win situation from the multiple lifetime perspective of your path. If you're asked to do something on someone's behalf, start working in the mundane world first. Worst case scenario, it will build relationship and community between you and the person who came to you for help. I work serious magick, on average, once every thirty-six to forty-eight months. That's one major working every three to four years. That's it. To be honest, I have very little need to do more than that.

Working magick with the intent of developing additional power (the same concept as lifting weights will help you become stronger) is ultimately a dead end. There's a certain amount of benefit to it, much as running sprints will help your run faster. The problem is that doing something (A) to achieve a desired result (B) is a linear perspective. There's a ceiling in the process that you won't advance beyond and pushing against that ceiling is detrimental to your growth. It's the same principle as running sprints will never allow me to run at the speed of light and continuing to push my body beyond a certain point will actually cause my muscles to break down and ultimately make me weaker until they heal.

Simple folk magick falls into this concept as well. Just because a rite is simple doesn't mean that it's ineffective; and in many cases, simple can be more effective. It isn't surprising that so much folk magick comes in the form of a blessing - a nightly prayer; a wish while blowing out the candles of a birthday cake; stirring the pot in a clockwise manner and thinking of love while you cook.

When I teach one-on-one I have both my beginning and intermediary students diagram each magickal working before they engage it. We typically use the following format:

A is the student who is working the rite. B is the target. C is your path. D is a person that is related to both you and your target. We then reduce the spell or working down to a single word that the caster is willing to have influence all four targets.

For instance, let's say you (A) decides that you want to work a spell that causes harm to someone who hurt you (B). You would then write "harm" as the title of your diagram. Because of the nature of magick, we can't lock onto a single target (B). It will come back to us (A) and impact at least two other targets (C & D), including someone who is related - perhaps in ways we don't understand or have yet to encounter - to both us and our target. (The amount of potential that is temporarily derailed on a person's path due to misguided workings is pretty crazy). In almost all situations, when a student sees the intent behind their working clearly drawn out, they immediately choose not to work a harmful spell and find a more enlightened approach instead.

Magick That Works

There are three flavors of energy that are consistently useful in such a working:

Love.

Hope.

Forgive.

Each of the three represents a step up the spiritual ladder from where we currently stand. Love, Hope, and Forgive are concepts we reach for in our own work because they represent a clearer definition of the Divine. Consciously choosing to extend those three forms of energy in our work not only allows our own ego to fall away, but it allows us to more closely mirror the Divine ourselves. That is how we grow in power, consistently and endlessly - by letting go of our ego and replacing whatever we're feeling with love.

Love isn't some fluffy bunny energy that requires us to wear rose-colored glasses. It is a position that simply says, "I am larger and more powerful than this moment and can choose to act from a place of power that you cannot touch." Love releases ego, the need for validation, and heals our wounds. As Acarya taught me, "The sword cannot pierce what is not present. You need to let go of what you seek to protect. If there is nothing to protect, you cannot be harmed. If you cannot be harmed, there is no place for fear. If there is no fear, there can be only love.”

The Deeper Lesson

We too often focus on the current moment. When we work magick and "nothing happens," we consider the working a failure. More often than not, magick is a seed that has to grow and mature before it's fruit can be harvested. While that may not take a significant amount of time, that process still takes places. An outcome that we may think is worth the price in the moment, may look very different a few steps farther down the path - which is one of the many reasons why you will constantly hear me say, "Breathe. Slow down." Every moment in our lives - just like every working - goes through a process of growth, from seed to harvest. That process includes how you feel about a challenge before you as well as how you will view that challenge farther down your path.

Because of our linear A to B perspective, we fail to consider that when we work magick, that magick is also working us. It's the second line of The Emerald Tablet, "As below, so above; and as above so below. With this knowledge alone you may work miracles." Whatever energy you put into a working, you will also become that energy. Want to get rid of a person who is plaguing your life that you just can't shake? Work a rite to send so much love their way that the happiness and joy will naturally pull them in another direction. Need to stop a jerk dead in their tracks? Saturate the lines between the two of you with the energy of forgiveness - that you may forgive them, that they can forgive themselves and whoever was responsible for breaking them in such a way, and that you can both move on from this lesson. When someone obsesses over you, fill their world with new hope - they will point their nose in a different direction and you will have the strength to hold your center until they do. (You're manifesting hope that didn't exist before - which, unless there is a deeper lesson to be learned, isn't the hope that they were inaccurately seeing in you.)

What's more - and this drives me nutty - is that I've heard countless spiritual practitioners readily state that this lifetime is Earth School and that the challenges we face are lessons custom-tailored to help us grow. The same practitioner, sometimes in the very next breath, will then state that they need to work magick to remove an obstacle in their path. It's kind of like telling the teacher that you're going to reserve the right to pick and choose the homework that you choose to do. In all honesty, you don't have to do the homework. And in all honesty, you may find yourself repeating that particular lesson until you step up and do the work. There's even a school of thought that says your higher self set those lessons before you for your higher good; trust me, a limited one-lifetime focused-on-the-moment perspective is not going to overrule that.

The very last thing that you want to do is start second-guessing the lessons that are before you by throwing around magickal energy and trying to move them out of the way. I can guarantee you that you didn't come into this lifetime to learn to cast spells that will enable you to get rid of your lessons. If something is hard, it's because the lesson is deep - either because you're ready for the material or because you kept telling the teacher where they could shove their homework until it needs to be dealt with NOW. Best case scenario? The thread is going to continue popping up in your world until you learn the lesson it represents. Worst case scenario? It's going to roll over to your next incarnation and you're going to get to deal with it again... and again... and again... until you learn the lesson it holds.

Indigenous Tibetan mystics don't bother teaching exercises to develop abilities such as telepathy or bi-location (the ability to appear and interact in two locations at once). They believe that such abilities manifest naturally as we let go of our limitations and the definitions that we've placed on the sacred nature of life. The approach to magick laid out here is harder than almost any other approach you'll see taught - and while it may not offer immediate validation (which is a nice way of saying you're getting your ego stroked), it helps you grow along your path and take steps toward a deeper understanding of reality and the ability to innately grasp countless "mystical" abilities that are simply our birthright. Approaching magick in this way requires a surrendering of self and the release of ego with each step. The more definitions we release, even if they define us, the more we allow ourselves to embrace the whole. The more limitations we release, even if those limitations define us, the more we truly embody "All is One." At the end of the day, after your rite is complete, would you rather have the satisfaction that you "did something" about the situation, or would you rather take a concrete step toward embracing your core power as a unique expression of the Divine? Even taking it on the chin and walking away opens us up to an entire realm of the mystical that clenching our fist and swinging back closes off to us. This path is quiet. It's slow. It requires us to breathe. But as we do, we not only embrace deeper power, but we release our hold on another limiting illusion and embrace more of the sacred.

Thoughts? Comments? You can contact us at connect@oldways.com or interact with Jeffrey, Briana, and the Old Ways community on our Facebook page.

Compiled from material previously published in Old Ways and republished on February 7, 2012.