Avoiding Chronic Magickal 'Job Hopping'

Black Magick & The Left Hand Path
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Greetings Folks,

One of the biggest obstacles that I have been facing for quite some time pertaining to the left hand path is not being able to stick to ONE path and fully walk it, achieve the desired result/experience intended and than move on. Personally one of my flaws is that I am quite scatter brained and mentally active, so I do have to discipline myself A LOT and stick with the process.

For example, you come across a grimoire/course with its full set of exercises intended for the magicians to produce specific results. Do you folks, strictly stick with ONLY that path working and work through it until you are done, despite the time you might have taken (months to years) and refrain from engaging in other practices that might detract you from the chosen path

OR

1.You work through your chosen grimoire and simultaneously work/perform rituals out of that grimoire’s context? For those who do this, how are you able to avoid getting lost and detracted from the path and ensure you finish the chosen path working?

2.You decide to form a relationship with spirit X & so you intend to work with it daily. During this period, do you also work with other spirits or stick to only spirit X?

To give y’all a snapshot on how I ‘jump’ from one path to another during moments of heightened mental activity, at my worst I have constantly jumped around working with deities from different systems and at my best, trying to walk multiple spiritual paths simultaneously. After some personal introspection, I admit that I am a sucker for novelty and when it wears off, I move on to the next thing.

I will admit that I have perfectionist tendencies, and that makes me feel guilty when I am working with spirits of different pantheons (not mixing them together, but working with each being individually according to its own system) and I feel like I should pathwork with all of the spirits in the godetia and spend years perfecting that before moving on. I doubt this is a productive mindset to be in.

Now, this doesn’t happen ALL the time and I have worked with spirits successfully, but I am really keen on pushing myself to the next level and producing terrific results. Simply ‘good’ or ‘mediocre’ results are not enough anymore as I feel that more can be brought to the table but the way I channel my energies and make it happen is where I need to really work on. I am currently 19 and took all of this seriously when I was late 17, so I need to sort this right now before I end up at 40 or 50 years old with mediocre skills and have not gained mastery over ANYTHING. That terrifies me. The last thing I want to be is a ‘Jack of All Trades, But Master of None’.

It would be great to hear the input of fellow BALGers!

Thank you for your time.

Pazuzu

3 Likes
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Great topic, and one I can certainly identify with, having similar tendencies myself. I did the same thing for years, burning through book after book, mixing systems and achieving real but unsatisfying results. I did finally focus on one system after a discussion with a friend that gave me perspective on the issue from his experiences as a martial artist. Though I was able to achieve results in a system, they were not of the same quality and power that full comprehension and mastery could achieve. Since so many concepts in magick translate from one path working to another I was always missing that extra bit of “oomph” that comes with a higher understanding of the finer aspects of the Work. After I focused on one path for a while my manifestations became better in nearly every way, though I am in no way now a master. Now I am somewhat methodical in terms of study. I fully immerse myself in a current in the learning phase, but I absolutely “mix and match” applicable aspects of multiple currents in my daily practice, and I most certainly honor previous obligations to prior paths. In some cases studying a different system can bring a greater understanding of something I have studied before but did not fully grasp. Sometimes, for myself, it requires a different way of expressing the same concept multiple times before the lesson is learned.