I saw direct magick mentioned elsewhere and started to look into it:
[url=http://www.magickofthought.com/start/]http://www.magickofthought.com/start/[/url]
It piqued my interest because of the benefits the writer claims.
What do you think of direct magick: legit or garbage?
Nah. Not completely anyway. There will always be things in magic that cannot be supplanted by “direct magic”. The very basis of the concept is flawed. Magic doesn’t work by symbolism. Traditional magic is worked by utilizing natural substances with inherent spirit and non physical entities to accomplish goals.
Lodestones don’t draw because you believe they do. They draw because their Spirit (andi mean this in a literal sense, an entity) is magnetic and naturally able to do that. Rue protects because the genii inhabiting it is protective.
You want direct magic? I once cursed someone with nightmares by creating a curse tablet. I simply wrote my curse down on paper, passed it through dragon’s blood incense, and buried it at the grave of the spirit I hired to do the job.
I started reading that yesterday, and I do find I agree with Euoi to some extent - that in most cases tools and spirits already exist who can help.
My own main interest is the experimental work of becoming, myself, a spirit who can affect reality via my thoughts alone (to “command the powers of a goddess within my lifetime”), and I’ve had some successes, so I’m going to continue to work along those lines as well as the more conventional routes.
What I found, going form his posts in 2012 - present day, is that he is now talking about “ethereal software” which I think he may find, as time progresses, is reinventing the wheel and working with what others among us would call spirits…
Still he’s doing interesting work, and I respect anyone willing to experiment with magick, so I’ll be following his blog now and then and see if he has any major breakthroughs.
I liked the idea of using direct magick, if possible, to do away with memorization and rituals. So in a sense, I thought direct magick might lead the way to the ability to affect reality via thoughts alone, like you’re aiming for, Lady Eva. The “ethereal software” bit to me seems to be the author’s attempt to explain spirits in a modern age, though it ended up confusing me more. One more term to memorize and comprehend, when I was interested in doing away with memorization and such.
Euoi, that is pretty direct magic indeed. 
Did you hire the ghost of a deceased person, or a non-human spirit of the graveyard?
I use direct magic all the time. More so than ceremonial magic actually. Truthfully, my magical work is constantly trying to find the right balance between ceremony and chaos.
Ceremonial is more reliable, but the drawback is you can’t always perform it on the spur of the moment.
Chaos or direct magic you can do at any time with no preparation, but the results are more random without the reinforcement provided by ceremonial repetition, emotion, and novelty.
None of my magical workings are purely one or the other, they all fit on a scale. I don’t do one or the other, I mix and match as the need arises.
i also like to use a mix, my rituals are never long and drawn out, they’re short and simple, but with several ceremonial aspects
Yes it is useful and practical for me. In fact when you need something on the fly in the moment there is little else you can do unless you have something already prepared in advance such as familiar’s on call or something.
One could argue that the ceremonial or ritual methods are a way of consciously changing the mind states to get a result. If this is a paradigm you believe in, then it could be possible to use it effectively. In fact it’s a common occurrence that results happen before rituals are performed.
But all these posts are just stories in your mind. No matter who says it works or who doesn’t, you won’t really know if it’s real or not until you do it yourself.
Direct magic can work. Always. The results can be really disasterous. But during writing that answer, i just thought, that even when using direct magic, you may be uncounciously calling the appropriate spirits to do the job…
Oh, and it is really demanding in terms of power put in.
[quote=“dellamage, post:8, topic:5754”]Direct magic can work. Always. The results can be really disasterous. But during writing that answer, i just thought, that even when using direct magic, you may be uncounciously calling the appropriate spirits to do the job…
Oh, and it is really demanding in terms of power put in.[/quote]
Interesting. Can you explain how it can be really demanding?
I mix a little bit of everything based on whatever feels right at the time, what my needs are, where I am at etc. I often change and tailor rituals and spells to fit my own needs as well making up my own and so far, it has never been a problem for me. If the intent and desire is truly there, it doesn’t matter what kind of magick you perform or how you alter it if using someone’s idea and changing it to fit your needs, it will still work.
Some people think that if they use a spell from someone else’s BOS or grimoire and alter it, that it will not work. There is a false preconception that changing a ritual for whatever reason and not following it exactly like the original was written, will cause skewed results or no results at all and this is not true. Like I said, if the intent and desire are strong enough, you could make dog shit into a magickal item if your heart so desires, but believing or fearing it will not work simply because you changed a candle color because that’s all you had on hand or not using mugwort because you don’t have any, will definitely cause the spell not to work because you believe it won’t.
If you think about it, in a way, all magick could be considered as chaotic even if structured and organized because you are throwing the course of the universe off balance to suit your own needs.
Ironically, dog shit IS used in magic.
As long you know what you’re doing when you’re modifying something, it’s cool. Like, if you don’t have lavender on hand for a cooling spell, you could use white roses. But leaving something out just because you don’t understand it can fuck up spells, depending on the important and associations of the substance. You would never, for example, trade out crossroad dirt for some mud outside your house.
I know dog shit is used in some forms of magick, that was just the only example I could think of with shock factor, like something gross and crazy.
And I do know there are times when substitutions are bad, but generally speaking, you usually can make substitutions if need be and it will not change the results. But at other times, you need to have the exact ingredients on hand or else the spell will not work, it just depends on what you are doing. Sometimes if you don’t have everything you need it is best to just find another similar spell without those ingredients or wait until you can get them, but my post was just a generalization, that normally it does not matter when working with more modern magick. Now something like Vodoun or Santeria, I would be a little leary of changing anything as those types of magick can be very potent and if tampered with, the results could still be potent, but not the results you were hoping for. Again, also just an example, the only thing I could think of for a comparison.