Every religion has its codes that are designed to protect you from spiritual attacks. They’re not necessarily magick, but they act the way magick does.
First protection is to live an ethical life. Every religion has its own ethical code to guide a believer.
Second is to be attached to and well-thought-of in your community of fellow believers (the Bride in Judaism, the Body of Christ in Christianity, the Ummah in Islam, the Sangha in Buddhism, etc) and to attend community gatherings as often as you can.
Third is to give charity for the sake of your community’s well-being, so the community as a whole doesn’t suffer abuse from non-believers.
Fourth is to honor believers who came before you, especially ones who were martyred for the faith.
Fifth is divided depending on whether the religion is open or closed.
If the religion is open, you’re required to proselytize to non-believers (for example, the LDS, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Hare Krishnas spend time preaching their gospels, and the Charismatics invite non-believers into their megachurches or go on social media to share their love of God or impart moral lessons from daily living).
If the religion is closed, you’re required to represent the religion in a good light in front of non-believers and wait until the curious ask about your faith, and then you get to refer them to a clergy member to see if they’d make a good fit for the system. This is how the mystery systems and secret societies operate; in some cases, you can’t apply, you have to be referred by an insider who is impressed by your potential before you receive an invite.
These are the typical outward protections, which give you community cover, a good name in the world, and good personal habits that speak on your behalf.
Then there’s the spiritual practice, which usually comes down to setting up a special room for contemplation, seasonal observations, weekly or daily spiritual cleansings, daily readings and reasonings, multiple daily prayers where you ask for favors and protection from harm, and daily meditations where you listen to your intuition for guidance and answers. There are other things as well, but these cover many of the universal basics.
The prayers and meditations come on the back end of the first five parts of outward practice. In the New Testament book of James 2:14 to 26, James the Just said ‘Faith without works is dead.’ The five points i mentioned are the works part. Without those things in place, faith or believing in your religious protection is greatly compromised as a religious person.
Again in the New Testament, Jude 4, 12 and 13, 16, 19 explain the type of pew-warmer who pretends to believe but who doesn’t practice the tenets. Jude 5 to 9 describes how both human beings and even angels have brought calamity upon themselves by not following the precepts of their religion. In these cases, a lack of diligence comes out in their character, meaning they act out of arrogance or impulsiveness, and react out of derision or desperation, scorning instruction in both cases.
Regardless of whether they seem to be successful in life or failing, their character shows and that lets you know their prayers will not be answered and they are not under spiritual protection, regardless of how it may seem. Even if they seem to be living a solidly happy life, a Tower moment will either expose their true predicament, or expose the fact that their beneficence comes not from religious observance, but from magickal technique.
With that said, a magician can jimmy the locks on any religion’s protection techniques and use them as they see fit because magicians connect directly to spiritual forces rather than human ones. For this reason, when you see a religious person acting against the religious precepts but their life continues to prosper, they are most likely doing something based on magickal foundations to support them. This is why i say a Tower moment will expose that beneficences comes from magickal technique. This is the reason why some people who are considered wicked by a religion’s tenets prosper regardless of them breaking religious taboos, and also underlies persistent hypocrisy in religious institutions: magickal practice enables and supports success despite religious disobedience.
This happens because the core of every religion is someone who established a magickal practice. The outward and inward habits are a shell of spirituality that give many of the benefits of spirituality, but the actual magickal practice give the same results without the religion. The precepts are based on ethics, but magick itself has no ethics and raw magick achieves many things that religious people consider to be unethical, yet it works the same. It’s one of those things nobody can explain and that many fear, but there you go.
What this means practically is that you either want to live according to the ethics and precepts of your religion for maximum protective coverage, or you need to establish the basics of a magickal practice that aligns with your religion to achieve the protection regardless of whether or not you live a good life as defined by that religion.
An example of this for Westerners raised in Judeochristianity is the use of Psalms. Jewish people and Christians use Psalms for protection, but so do magicians. All 3 get the benefit of doing so. Jewish people gain the protections through observing the Mishneh Torah. Christians gain the protection through salvation and grace, and also by living a right life. Magicians get the benefit by commanding angels using Godnames in trances, or by consecrating sympathetic magick objects linked to their aims. All 3 have their precepts they live by, and the precepts underlie the results they get. For the Jew and Christian, their success or failure depends on their diligence in following religious precepts and their faith in YHVH or Jesus’ ability to bless and protect them. For the magician success or failure depends on skill in executing magickal techniques.
