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In this series, I’m figuring out my reasons behind direct magick. You’ll get to see my thought process. If you want a polished 3-paragraph answer, come back in a week.
There are two components of the Why: Curiosity, and results.
Originally, I pursued direct magick out of curiosity. What happens after you send out your intent? How is the change in the world implemented? What are the mechanics that underlie all magick, from rituals to energy healing to belief-based Chaos Magick?
I started magick at age 11, and was on that curiosity-driven path by age 14. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about results, and I hardly knew about traditional occultism. (The concept of a ritual? Sure. How to do the LBRP? Nope.)
But why, in the years since, have I kept with direct magick? Surely, an established style is easier, with more answers, more social support, and easier networking for blogs and classes and books. So why haven’t I adopted it?
I think the answer is this: Doing traditional magick is more of the same. It doesn’t scratch my need to explore, but more than that, it won’t revolutionize magick.
And magick needs a revolution. A few hundred years ago, before sterilization and anesthetics and antibiotics, medicine was roughly as effective as energy healing is today: We could promote healing, maybe help the person feel better, but it couldn’t do much for terminal patients. Today, medicine does objectively amazing things, but magick is still so ineffective* that we’re amazed when we get any results at all.
*Compared with modern science. Doctors beat energy healers, email beats telepathy, and so on. I’ll get into details later.
Amazing results. That’s what I’m really after. That’s the real Why of direct magick for me as an adult mage. Building techniques that produce results on par with modern science. I’ll talk more about what that means, and the difference between being amazed by an unexpected result vs producing genuinely amazing results, later in this series.
Other posts in this series:- Why Direct Magick (February 4, 2012)
- Why Direct Magick: Curiosity and Results (February 5, 2012)
- Why Direct Magick: Two Kinds of Amazing (February 6, 2012)
- What Genuinely Amazing Magick Looks Like (February 7, 2012)
- The Real Reason for Direct Magick (February 12, 2012)