Historical Veritas / V-Society Magick Articles archive
Article metadataArchival notice: This is an archival republication of a historical forum article. The text is preserved for research, citation, and continuity; authorship remains with the original forum author where identifiable, and dates/replies/views reflect the surviving capture or Wayback-era ledger where available.
- Author: TheThing
- Original post date: November 03, 2006, 09:28:15 AM
- Author quote / captured profile/signature line: Posts By Osmosis
- Article title: The problems and virtues of Aspirants
- Length: 1552 words (~7 min read)
- Replies / views: 4 / 1484
- Last visible board activity: November 09, 2006, 06:13:41 PM
- Source archive: Forum topic archive
- Local capture source: res/The problems and virtues of Aspirants.rtfd
- Archival flag/tag: historical archive; Veritas Society; Magick Articles; preserved forum post
Additional archival context
- Archivist abstract: A reflective article on the strengths, weaknesses, errors, and virtues common among beginning or developing occult students.
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Why people struggle at magick
I promise that every single magician who is reading this started with dreams of being a awesome magi. Lot’s of people start the road of magick and don’t get very far but a lot of people do. You may be one of the people who’s travelling the road in Super Car or one of those who’s travelling in a broken Morris Miner. But despair not every one has problems; I intend this article to explain the three most debilitating problems and give simple effective answers to solve them. Since even the best magicians suffer from these problems, so prepare for an occult ‘Pimp my ride’ brother. [I apologise if my tone gets a little harsh, I do that sometimes]
1. Slave to ritual
Are you a slave to ritual? Do you spend more time concentrating on gathering ceremonial tools than doing meditation? Do you think ‘Does my robe make me look mysterious’ when you should be performing banishing rituals. If so you’re a slave to ritual. Rituals are meant to help you focus your will, not drive you insane with pointless rules.[none of these rules are actually pointless just distracting unless you know there true meaning]
Try to do rituals with a bit less dress sense and a bit more attitude or feeling.
2. Slave to study
Take a occultist or saint, prophet ect……… write all you know about him or her include all their teachings that you know of. Write it all down in tiny bullet points and then write down all the times you have actually sincerely used the teaching. [This takes ages but is a real eye opener.] It’s is a real killer and affects every one to an extent. There is only one known cure. Put what you are learning into practice.
3. Slave to procrastination
How many doctrines have you studied? How many orders have you been in? How large is your library of occult books? Having the above in large numbers is all well and good but they are useless you actually use your knowledge for practice.
It’s common for people to search around for info and to get their bearings before jumping in. But you’re not going anywhere unless you jump.
In short,
. Ritual is to help your mind work magick, it’s a tool. Don’t become a slave to it.
. Practice what you read about if you want to make to make [real] progress.
. It’s always the right time to start your journey
P.S I had absolutely huge problems with number 1 and until a few years ago [no longer], and I still suffer from the last two quite a bit.
Why people excell at magick
I figured I might a well do a sequel to my last mini lesson. This one is all together more advanced lesson as it is next to impossible to have these virtues without first disposing of the blights of the first article. So get practicing already.
1. Inherent ability
Sadly this factor, your experiences before becoming magi will affect your speed picking up a effective magick mindset. It may also affect specific areas i.e. a actor might excel at dramatic ritual magick and invocation, virtuoso pianist might excel at practicing. This one is not really attainable but it doesn’t matter as you can catch up with natural talents with a little practice.
2. Focus
You can have read 1000s of occult books but still have a mediocre knowledge of magick even less practical ability. This is down to focus. Rather than slowly absorbing all the words of a great occult book and taking them to heart they skim though a great number of works. But on the other side of the spectrum there is the focused magician, with only a few sources to hand they can absorb and understand all of what they say, making great progress. Aim to be one of those lads and lasses, study don’t skim. Spend time in your study and ritual room rather than Barnes and Noble. Here some tips.
. Print your e- books it’s hard to really absorb knowledge off a computer screen, you can know read them anywhere and everywhere now. [It’s great reading about the occult before bed]
. Memorise your rituals. There are too many reasons why this is important. It will pay off 10 fold.
. Get help; join a good order or hook up with other magicians and talk. It will keep you focused.
3. Ability to adapt effortlessly to the magical paradigm
It’s vitally important that you can move into the magical paradigm easily and effortlessly. When you at work you should not be thinking about everyday matters but totally absorbing yourself in the paradigm you are in. This is where certain aspects of ritual come in. This one is a tough on to practice, but if you live with occultism for longer enough and immerse yourself deeply enough it becomes a piece of cake. Here some often used tips.
. Take a magical name and use it during ritual and mediation. Eventually use it more and more as the lines blur between your two lives. [Which actually are one and the same] this is used by many occult orders and eastern religions. If
You’re interested there are plenty of fine resources to help you pick one.]
. Dress up for rituals, this only one of the meanings of this custom. But it’s also a very effective way to switch paradigms.
. Trancing out, anything is possible mentally when you’re in trace so learn to trance out.
. Research a type of magick called chaos magic and see how you can applie it’s ideas to your own magical practice.
4. Understanding
This is an important one, not only is a big part of the spiritual quest. With out it most practical magick is rendered useless. Take one of the more indulgent grimores as an example. A understanding magi might figure out the reason and meaning behind the instructions and tailor make them for him self allowing him to get full results. The non understanding one will likely get no results, see slave to ritual [he might if he’s a really excellent ritual magician but it’s unlikely.]
This very important subject for the ritual magicians among us, so here is some helpful tips.]
. Study symbolism or cabbala to understand your ritual instructions. [ GD style magick]
. Study general symbolism for other types of magic [chaos magick and witchcraft]
. A lot of types of occultism have their own symbolism [Thelma and masonry]
. Use your intuition more when interpreting symbolism it’s usually right.
5. Dedication
Let me tell you a story. I know to people a 23 year old Wiccian who goes between obsession and giving up. She has done a few might impressive things but all ways gives up once hardship sets in. The other is 43 he has been practicing GD style magick for 22 years never with any spectacular results. But over time he has become excellent magician and man. He never showed and natural talent but had Dedication in bucket loads.
All he did was practice hatha yoga every day and practice the LBRP twice day and the middle pillar when he could. Also astral projected and summoned occasionally.
None of these things are particularly difficult but he practiced them ever day rain our sun, and he in his own fashion developed huge talent.
. Practice every day rain or sun, Christmas our Halloween whether you’re in Iceland or Vietnam
. Study everyday day and don’t give up.
6. Drive
This one is necessary to achieve dedication unless you have a superhuman amount of self discipline
Why do want to magician? Do you really want it or is it just a hobby?
The Wiccian girl I was talking about in the last section had a unbelievable amount of natural talent. But she was academic and pretty and had her whole life a head of her. She could easily just have forgotten about occultism and got lost in her own little world of coursework and partying. She did in the end and lost out on her very promising future. The occult was a hobby to her.
The second one was a single plumber whose life felt empty and needed meaning. Occultism was his life,. He simply was dedicated and he was driven. So make sure you never lose site of your goal. Write what you want to achieve and why. If you’re dedicated it will come to you. Why are you doing what you are doing?
Never abandon your dreams.
7. Common sense.
This is surprisingly not very common. A lot of people think that if they believe in magick, they need to believe in aliens, ghosts and such like. Wrong, magick makes perfect sense to those who master it. You can be a occultist and still possess a reasonable mind. You can still use reason. This is not to say you can’t keep an open mind.
Many occultists over the ages have liked to apply scientific method to magick. [Crowley and the renaissance magi for example]
Keep practicing. Yours truly the TheThing.
« Last Edit: November 10, 2006, 08:35:07 AM by TheThing »
Logged
I have never had any intentions of being politically correct if you are easily offended you will be offended. You have been warned!
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Archivist note: Preserve corrections as appended notes where possible. Avoid silently modernizing terminology, spelling, or claims unless a moderator intentionally creates a separate edited edition.