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“The sigil I created in your class worked amazingly well. But none of the sigils I’ve done since then have worked,” said D, a talented energy worker with no formal training. She was speaking about a sigils / manifesting class taught by M, who has at least a decade of experience with Chaos Magick, Thelema, and other systems.
It might not seem like it, but that’s enough information to make a good guess at the problem. What do YOU think it might be? Yes, you, reading this article. Debugging techniques is an important skill, and here’s a chance to practice. If you want to play along, make a guess, just say it to yourself or write it in the comments.
One friend suggested a possibility: Work done in private can feel different than work done in public. Maybe D just gets better results in a public setting? This lead to much conversation about public vs private and how to adjust.
But that answer didn’t seem to quite fit. If I were to verbalize my reasons, it’s that the difference (“great results” vs “total failure”) was too large to be caused by something as subtle as “work done in private can feel different.” We should be looking for a structural error in D’s technique, some missing piece that was filled in by being in the class. That’s how I’d verbalize my reasoning. But in the moment, it was closer to an unconscious, “No, that doesn’t break enough pieces.”
For those of you playing along at home: Revisit your guess, see how it sounds now, and make another guess if you like.
Here’s my answer: In the class, M was engaging their ethereal software as they demonstrated the sigil techniques. That made it easy for D to (unconsciously) connect to M’s ethereal software. D, being talented with energy, got good results using M’s ethereal software. (And M, being well-trained, has good ethereal software for manifesting. M would refer to that ethereal software as a Servitor or Egregore, btw.)
But D wasn’t conscious of any of this. She didn’t make a lasting connection to M’s software, and couldn’t access it on her own. So at home, D performed the same outward steps, built the same energy, but didn’t have M’s ethereal software to handle the actual manifesting, and therefore got no results.
How can D fix this? Do another sigil with M, and pay attention to the forces involved. Either make a lasting connection herself, or ask a spirit she knows to remember the force for her. (D does a lot of work with spirits.)
M has previously described my classes as “a kick to the side of the head, in a good way.” M pondered my analysis, then excitedly agreed.
This was a fun puzzle for me, debugging D’s technique. It was also validating, to use my work to help a friend. I hope you playing along at home.
If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.Tags: Debugging, Ethereal Software, Sigils
So did your fix work for D, or not? Or haven’t you tried it out with her yet?
We didn’t have a chance to try it. I’ll post an update when we do.
I think your reading of this is spot on Mike, however I would suggest that the “ethereal software” you refer to is belief. I seems to me that in this case, the teacher’s belief in the process (or in NLP terms his “frame”) was so strong that he manifested sucess for everyone. Then, when he was no longer there to influence results, the student, who’s belief was lacking for whatever reason, was unable to manifest success herself. It would be interesting to drill into her thoughts around the original success. Maybe she had some doubts…..?
I’m familiar with that notion. It’s the basis of Chaos Magick: That magick (or everything) behaves the way we believe it does. I’ve always had the view that Chaos Magick was suggesting a way to engage one’s mind (and one’s ethereal muscles) toward a goal, rather than putting forward an actual statement about how reality works.
Why is that my view? Because there’s a problem with the notion that everything behaves the way we believe it does: It’s simply not true. There are objects and phenomena that exist out there, independent of our belief. That’s why we can be surprised at results, why we can be wrong, why we can learn. It’s why science changes and advances over time. And it turns out, exploring and understanding those external phenomena lets us do some rather useful things.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away -Philip K Dick
When I talk about ethereal software and the rest of my work, I’m talking about external objects, not internal beliefs.
Here are my posts on belief: https://magickofthought.com/tag/belief/
If it turns out that the ethereal software tweak doesn’t work, another possible explanation would be morphic resonance, as explored in the works of Rupert Sheldrake. Basically, doing it in a group allows the energy signature of each participant to shift in the “direction” of the strongest energy present. But without that signature to resonate with, the signature of the individual is less properly aligned. The solution there would be for D to shift her energy signature in whatever direction it was shifted during the class. In practice, of course, you can just work with spirits to help out either way, so probably that’s going to be the best solution regardless. They can immediately perceive D’s signature and tell her anything that’s wrong with it.
Doubt could also theoretically be a factor, and that’s coming from me – I don’t personally think that belief powers magick like the chaotes do, but rather that doubt can (but doesn’t always) get in the way of manifesting. Essentially, your energy is more engaged when you’re more confident, and that can have significant effects on the results you get from energy work. For many people, social situations like classes increase confidence.
Thank you! Great ideas, I’ll pass them along.
Fantastic work on this site btw. Your methods aren’t that far away from my own. With that out of the way I suspect more likely the student in this scenario has invested an incredible amount of faith into her teacher in the moment of seeing the teacher in action. In such a situation the presence of the teacher inspires confidence, true belief and bypasses doubts present in their existing self. They have greater faith in the teacher, there by the presence of the teacher acts as a kind of talisman. In this case they need to get back to basics with meditation/raw energy work. Qi Gong or other energy work that provides strong physical results can be fantastic for this. After all nothing says “this is working” like being able to toss a 300lb man through the air with one hand. This then builds up both confidence but also energy structures that may be present in the body (jury is out on this) as well as the mind.
It’s interesting how people reflexively say, “It must be doubt causing the problems, here’s how I handle doubt.” Talking with my friend and the teacher, no, I don’t think doubt was the active ingredient here. But thanks for writing.