You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.
Note: This will be my new front page. Please give me feedback. Are any spots confusing, dull, or otherwise need work? Any spelling or grammar errors? I know, asking the internet for grammar feedback just this once is like asking piranhas to nibble just a little, but I think everyone here can handle it.
The title will be my new tagline (below “Magick of Thought.”) Other taglines I considered: Magick the Hard Way. Pushing the Frontiers of Magick. Magick so Effective… or Magick so Amazing… instead of Magick so Useful. Again, feedback is much appreciated.
Thanks!
Why Isn’t Magick Respected?
We can blame science, the media, universities, or dozens of other things. But really, the answer is simple: Magick isn’t respected because it’s not a mature field yet.
How can you tell it’s not a mature field? Lots of ways: We study ancient magick because it’s just as effective as modern magick, which means we haven’t advanced modern magick very far. Our measurements are subjective and hard to reproduce (there’s no magick-o-meter). Most experiments are case studies, without anything to eliminate placebo or coincidence.
But the big one, for me, is that we’re amazed when magick works at all, even though we aren’t producing genuinely amazing results.
Genuinely Amazing Results
“Wait a minute,” you say. “I can influence the physical world with magick. That’s pretty amazing.”
Yes, it is. And that’s the problem: Most magick is amazing whenever it produces any results, because we expected nothing, and got enough to demonstrate that magick is real. That’s the opposite of a mature field.
Genuinely amazing results are something else entirely: Results so effective that they would be amazing even if they came from medicine, engineering, or any other modern science. Results amazing for themselves, not simply because they’re unexpected. That’s the bar we need to set.
What would “genuinely amazing” magick look like? Well, I’m not there yet — if I were, you’d be reading this on CNN, not on my blog. But let me give you a few examples that look promising, extrapolated from results I’m getting right now:
Autoimmune Diseases: I’ve had success with healing techniques for a friend’s chronic hives. The same underlying physiology is behind other autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. With a decade of focused research, we might develop healing techniques for a variety of autoimmune disorders.
Nerve damage: I’ve had two friends with spinal injuries, suffering from numbness and reduced mobility in their legs. One was in her 30s and already required a walker. After a healing session focusing on their nerves, both reported improved feeling and mobility — one for 24 hours, the other for a week. (Their slipped disks continued pressing on the nerves, causing more damage.) With a decade of focused research, we might develop longer-lasting results, possibly in conjunction with surgery (performed by doctors), and develop healing techniques for brain injuries.
Consciousness integration: We all have unconscious desires and urges. They often get stuck at the age they were formed, becoming unhealthy for our adult selves. Consciousness integration lets your conscious mind talk to those unconscious parts, show them who you are as an adult, and get them to work with you instead of sabotaging you. I’ve done it for myself, and it’s like a year of personal growth in a weekend. Friends and clients also reported much better results than simply meditating to explore their unconscious. This technique is mostly developed, and I’m ready to think about marketing it.
Note: These are ambitious research goals based on my current capabilities. Like all research, not all ideas will pan out.
Direct Magick: Magick the Hard Way
Genuinely amazing magick is hard. To get amazing results, you’ll need some hard-to-learn skills.
Direct magick is magick the hard way. It builds on top of any style of magick you already practice — Reiki, Hermetics, energy work, psychic intuitions, etc — by making your mental muscles* conscious. Then, instead of just sending out your intent, we’ll explore what happens in your mind, and in external magickal forces, to actually change the world. In other words, direct magick dives into aspects of magick that most styles never discuss openly.
*Mental muscles = The parts of your mind that respond to visualizations / rituals and drive magick.
I’ve tried to make learning direct magick as gentle as possible. My guide walks you through skills in the right order, shows you the exercises to learn them, and helps you test yourself to make sure you’re learning each step correctly. But make no mistake: Even with a guide, direct magick is challenging, and if you just want the easy results, there are easier ways to get there.
So, why learn direct magick? Because there are some places you can only go after learning those hard-to-learn skills. Because you want to explore more of magick than the easy path allows. And because growing magick into a respected field is worth the work.
This blog is about developing magick so amazing, they can’t ignore you. No one ever said it would be easy.
Getting Started
- What direct magick is, in a minute or less.
- What mages actually do (not what’s in movies). [Note: I’ll probably rewrite that post.]
- The major moving parts of direct magick. [Note: Replace with series coming out next week.]
- The step by step guide to learning direct magick. [Note: Will be replaced with the book.]
- Come back for a new post every day. (Or sign up for RSS or email updates.)
If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.So, that’s the new front page. My hope is that this post got you excited and motivated to learn direct magick, so you’d click some links and practice some exercises. Did I meet that goal? Thanks for your honest feedback.
I like where you are going with this and I am with you. But there is something that you are leaving out with this analysis, I am afraid. One of the reasons that magick is not respected is because it is deemed to be not respectable. Why is that? In sociological terms, this is because of its deviant and unauthorized aspects, that which is transgressive, the dangerous, the uncontrolled. Many magickal systems have a “left hand path,” with socially unacceptable curses and harming to accompany/parallel the blessings and healings.
This is a social stigma, whether it exists in fact or not:
Magick, by most observers, has a DARK SIDE.
Of course, the same can be said about western medical systems, physicians, and their pharmaceuticals as well. It just might be that that they have better p.r., and a lot more power (and money) to shape the discourse.
Enjoying the new format!
Thanks Yvonne. I’m going to think about the dark side / transgressive part, and see if I can include that in the next version. Always great hearing from you.
In the consciousness integration part you use the term marketing, do you mean that you intend to sell the technique? Or would it be more like releasing a finished product?
I would sell it as a service. If you’re a mage and can do the technique yourself, it’s free.
Hey Mike,
Here’s my two cents,
I think that the concept of magic isn’t respected for many reasons. To call Magic a field is well, a misnomer. It isn’t a field. It isn’t really an organized topic of inquiry and study, with the exception of the study of magic from a anthropological/sociological perspective. Even schools like The Phoenix Rising Academy (which is fighting very hard for accreditation) isn’t teaching magic but rather the social perspectives and philosophies of esoteric thought and its history.
If you look at history, magic has been condemned by many different groups. For instance the three major religions of the world don’t suffer sorcerer’s very lightly. Here is a quote from the book of revelations,
“But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”
From the religious perspective magic is an affront to God. And can you blame them for thinking so. A religion is only as strong as it’s numbers of believers. If you could find a solution to your problem that didn’t involve God’s power but our own that might rob some legitimacy from God. And this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of condemnation as a tool for social control to indoctrinate and or alienate groups of people.
Yvonne eluded to the fact that people fear what they don’t understand. There are also the Charlatans. Those that profess that they can perform miracles and then found as frauds. They erode the legitimacy of our pursuits and research.
This is a gross generalization (naughty I know) but many people that pursue magic are not the most responsible folk. I think that’s why you see so many spells for money (for sale non-the-less. Irony). It’s hard to take magic seriously when it’s most prominent members find it hard to be respected do to there life choices.
And then there is the scientific lens which you allude to at the beginning of your post. Science demands the adherence to strict rules. For instance, in your post you talk about helping two people with spinal injuries. How are you measuring your success or failures? At this moment your population size is extremely limited, how are you going to increase that to get a larger sample of data? Even more basic then that, what is you hypothesis?
I’m bringing this up because as I was reading through your post I felt like the post was trying to sell me something. As well, the last couple of posts I’ve read had heavy incantations towards research for the purpose of sales. I come from a mixed field of backgrounds. I graduated with my B.S in financial management and entrepreneurship and I’m working towards a Masters in Psychology. From a marketing sense the post is coming of very strong (it feels like a hard sale).
So I guess what I’m getting at is what is the purpose of this new front page? From my perspective you are trying to grab peoples attention by saying you have a great system for magic that can augment a persons already existing system and you have personal experience on how it works. Am I off base there.
Finally, are you trying to sell the ideas on your site? If so, I would highly suggest working with a website marketer to help draft your opening page’s pitch and presentation.
If I’m off base please feel completely free to tell me to go F&%K OFF. I won’t take offense.
Thanks. That’s really helpful. I don’t want to come off as a hard sell, but I do feel like these ideas take some work to engage with, and like I need to promise some benefit to get people to put in the effort and learn direct magick, rather than just learning a ritual or doing some lightweight visualization or candle magick or something. Am I wrong there?