Magick of Thought

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As I was putting together the outline, I realized I haven’t answered the first question: Who is my book for?

I had a particular organization in mind, where each skill would be useful for a ritual mage or psychic, and it gradually builds up from what you’re doing now to what I want to share with you. It seems like a sensible strategy, but as I think about writing in a more personal voice, it also feels kind of dry, or corporate.

Also, I don’t think I need to encourage people quite that much to try my exercises. Most readers will either already know me from the blog or be getting the book from a friend. In both cases, I need to be interesting, but I have a bit of leeway to get you through a few exercises. So, I think it’s more important to engage my reader as a person, rather than have an immediate payoff in technical magick skill.

Of course, once I figure out my basic plan, I’ll see about adding some immediate payoffs. But that should be a bonus, not the centerpiece.

Potential Audiences

The first thing that comes to mind is to write the book for myself, when I was starting out with magick. What are the things I wish I knew? I’ve tried this before, though, and there are a few problems: I don’t remember that time my life all that clearly (I was 11); I tend to focus too much on technical exercises, and not enough on the reasons behind them; and it might be the wrong tone for adult readers with previous experience in magick.

I could write for Lisa. Really, a lot of my writing is for her already. (Most of the advanced topics.) The first few sections would be for her when I first met her, and the later sections might even be for her now. She did psychic work, and has recently learned ethereal-software-based energy healing, so that might leave ritual mages out in the cold, but it’s a good option.

The other option I see is to write for the readers who give me feedback. (I’ll be blogging each section as I write it.) That way, it’s interactive, and I’m focusing on my most engaged readers. And it would let Ananael (who I’m sure will call me on things I miss) represent the ritual mages.

So, I think that’s the plan: Write for Lisa, plus readers who ask questions and send me feedback. And I’ll put in a thank you page for any readers who help me with this (your name and website, under whatever pseudonym you want).

Thoughts? Comments? It’s never too early to get on the thank you page :)

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

I’m blogging the process of writing my book, so you can see what goes into it and maybe get inspiration for your own book.

I’d planned to start my book with an outline, but most skills build on earlier skills, so the order matters as much as the list of topics. Rather than trying to organize everything in one go, I’m going to list the main skills for direct magick today — those are also the main topics of my book — and figure out the order later.

How can you help? Let me know what I missed, or anything you were hoping to see that’s not there.

Getting Started

Energy meditation and a basic ritual (LBRP?), for readers who’ve never done any magick before. Using quartz to make your energy more obvious. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll skip these pages.

Communication

How to send each concept accurately. This could be words, images, or something else, but how to send each unit of your message clearly and reliably.

Sub-topics: Quieting your thoughts. Placing thoughts in one part of your mind. Preparing that part of your mind for a particular signature. Placing your thoughts on a connection. (Maybe I’ll cover how to package your thoughts into a message, but that’s probably for a later, more advanced book.)

Personal-Growth Type Enlightenment

Magick techniques to overcome petty emotions so you are driven by a desire to create, not a drive for power. The technique will probably be based on consciousness integration, but needs to be simplified.

Sensory Connections

A set of skills to watch all the moving parts that make your magick work. This will be interspersed throughout the book, so you’ll improve your sensory connections a bit, then use them to do something else (which also gets you practice time with that sensory technique), then learn the next level.

Sub-topics: Quieting your energy (cover that with communication?). Quieting your connections. Sensing smaller signatures. Using multiple connections to sense an area, tracing a path. Sensing energy vs sensing structures, and how to notice low-power structures.

Protection

How to prevent magick attacks from spirits trying to drain your energy, or other malicious spirits and mages. Not enough to make you an expert, (that’s its own book), but enough to make you an unappealing target.

Sub-topics: Shielding. Noticing a connection. Breaking or removing a connection (and what to do if the spirit is actively using the connection). Tracing the connection to its source. A basic attack to cause a headache (in case they don’t give up).

Using Ethereal Software

How to recognize it, find it, and communicate with it. Most of the techniques are in the communication section. This will focus on finding it, and on common useful commands.

Sub-topics: Recognizing the spot in your mind where the ethereal software wants to connect, and recognizing the software’s signature. Aligning your communication to the software’s signature so it responds to you as though you were initiated. Asking the ethereal software to communicate in words, rather than intents. Common useful commands.

Awakening Your Mental Muscles

This starts with using energy to speed up the natural awakening of your mental muscles. Later, you’ll directly activate the muscles and the paths that provide them power.

Sub-topics: Finding your mental muscles. Recognizing which ones are awakening. A general map of common mental muscles. Finding the mental muscles that your current muscles want to work with. Awakening hibernating muscles, along with the paths that provide them power. What the fatigue feels like when a new mental muscle starts awakening, and how to help it so you don’t get tired.

Mental Posture

How to engage your mental muscles, particularly after awakening new ones. Also, how to keep your mental muscles passively engage, so you’re always paying attention to the magickal world.

Sub-topics: Developing a single mental posture for all your magick. Specializing your mental posture for each task. Dynamic posture, where you engage whatever you need for the current task, without practicing it beforehand. Making it all conscious.

Energy Healing

Both using ethereal software, and doing it directly. It will address energy layer, and at least one step down the path from energy to cells. I’ll probably return to practical topics like energy healing multiple times, teaching a new better version after you’ve learned new core skills. Include some case studies.

Manifesting

This is really an application of the techniques for using ethereal software. Mostly a list of commands, and tips on how to phrase questions. It will be a short chapter, or possibly the motivation for some of the exercises.

How You Can Help

It’s so, so easy for me to forget something, because once you’ve practiced these skills for a year or more, most of them become second nature, and you forget you’re even doing them.

So, let me ask you: Did I miss anything? Are there any skills you’d hoped for that aren’t here?

Thanks.

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

Short answer: $1,000 for a professional job.

I’ve been weighing self-publishing vs going with a small occult publishing house. I’m writing up my research / thinking in this series, in case it’s useful to someone else.

Today: Costs.

Self-publishing itself has zero up-front costs. You submit your book as a PDF, pay a few bucks per book when someone buys it, and that’s it.

But if you do everything yourself, you wind up with a lot of headaches and a lousy book. Here’s the cost for a high-quality book (I’m figuring around 100 pages, which is around 30 long blog posts):

• Editor: Around $500. Price is per word or page, so a 500-pager will be 5x as expensive.
• Artist, for cover art: Incredibly variable, but Createspace charges $350, which seems like a good ballpark.
• Layout: $250 on Createspace, not tied to length.

Tip: Have an independent artist do the cover. Print on demand publishers make very little per book sold, so they have little incentive to produce something great. They sell convenience, not exceptional books.

For this $1k, you can then sell your book for, let’s say, $10-20. Once Amazon and the printer take their cut, you get about 1/2 of the cover price. So, you’ll recoup that $1k investment after 100-200 sales.

If you’re not an author, that probably sounds easy. It’s not. Over the lifetime of a book? Sure, 30 years from now I’ll have my thousand bucks back, plus a few hundred profits. But I’d do better buying a government bond. Publishing a book loses money, and it only makes sense as an investment in teaching / speaking / a healing practice / etc.

To put those numbers in perspective, a standard publishing house deal gets you about 10% royalties per book ($1-2), with zero costs up front. But again, if we’re talking 100-200 books, $1-2 per book isn’t even worth considering.

So, the end message is: Don’t publish to make money. (Which I already knew). Publish to establish yourself as an expert and drive the rest of your career.

But there’s a second message: The costs and profits are so small that you should totally ignore the money — both the up-front costs and the royalty rate — when considering self-publishing vs a publishing house. Instead, go with whatever will accomplish your career goals the best (energy healing, teaching, etc).

So next, I’ll look at publicity.

Aside: How do book publishers make any money? Sure, their editors and artists and everyone are staff, so they cost probably half what a freelancer does, but there are also lawyers and managers and other overhead. I’m getting the feeling that the answer is: Publishers don’t make much money, at least in the occult world.