Well today has been one of those annoying days that has me thinking on some things again. Specifically results in magick. Not so much gaining results but rather the specific results you want in a cost efficient manner. I do not mean cost efficient as in supplies or materials but rather the cost of energy and skill needed from you as the magician. Now I know how to accomplish and improve it but at the same time it reminds me of something I see very often. Uncertainty in the magician. Uncertainty of ones own powers and the results they gain if you have even gotten results at all and the trends of thought that tend to sabotage further work and mistakes often made in getting results or using them. Now while much of this may seem rather basic some of it I feel is drastically overlooked or not mentioned at all.
To this end I will not be talking about the so called ‘lust of results’ but rather on how to recognize the results you do get and capitalize on them. Now I find there are a few factors with the magician themselves that play into gaining results.
So in order of importance as I would rank them.
- Focus/concentration
- Control
- Application
- Energy
Focus and concentration is the first component here. Now some might make an argument for them being two different things or two words for the same thing. I prefer to consider them two aspects of the same ability. Focus being intensity and concentration the duration. Now that is not to say you need to be able to focus for a long time to get results but it can certainly help.
Now in regards to what it is it should be self explanatory but I mean the pure state of focus that pushes aside all distraction and thought to exist solely in the moment with intent and action. Not the you are thinking only of things associated with x thing or you can do one thing for a long time while having a bunch of other thoughts. It is the ability to push all that aside.
It is very simple to practice but can be quite challenging to master. My preferred method that I have found to work very well is to take a crystal or other somewhat shiny object and placing it in front of you focus all of your mind and attention on it for as long as you can pushing aside all other thoughts. No visualization or analysis of the object but just pure focus upon it. Keep at this until you can focus on it without distraction creeping in for an hour or more. This also serves to make this a fairly powerful talisman you can use as an aid to focus spells and thoughtforms through. I myself push energy into mine each session to use a backup supply of power.
Next leading directly off from focus we have control. Control is the control of ones own thought and emotion. Being able to silence and raise thoughts and emotions and direct them with your focus to where is needed and to the extent needed. It is know when you have directed enough towards your goal and when it is just overkill that will explode everywhere. You can see it as the internal application the focus you have been developing and that is exactly how you practice it. By controlling yourself and your thoughts, feelings and actions.
Now we come to application. While some might see this as just being control it is a bit different. You certainly need control for this. This is where you direct your efforts and how you do so to accomplish your goals. Do you leave it up the spell you put out to find the path of least resistance or do you need to apply that effort to a specific facet of the situation to get what you want. Take for instance a situation I found myself in once.
Someone once saw fit to try and slander me with rather dastardly rumors. Now this isn’t the first time it has happened but these rumors were quite a bit more serious in their content than the previous ones. Now instead of relying on a general spell to shut them up I knew that they happened to be absolutely terrified of me by what they thought they knew. So instead I waited until I knew they were asleep and with applied focus and control over my own mental body formed myself in their dreams to terrorize them impressing the key points that were needed to make it through to their conscious mind and they very quickly recanted all they had said and became rather a laughing stock.
Another decent and more often used example is when it comes to the weather. I wanted to go for a walk down to subway for food but the rain was rather awful so using I applied myself on spreading out the load of the clouds so that with the wind blowing it higher up the rain in the immediate vicinity was redirected long enough for me to get my food and return. I couldn’t stop the rain but I could redistribute it and redirect enough to do what I needed.
Lastly, we come to energy. Now there is a very specific reason energy is listed last despite seeming to be the most important aspect of magick and getting results. How many of us and how often have we manifested something just with an accidental thought and focus but no effort made to direct energy towards it? If you are like me you have probably done so a fair bit of the time. Energy tends to naturally flow where you focus yourself. So when we work with energy consciously we are loading an additional conscious bulk into what is already directed by our focus and control and this allows us to be consciously aware and program that energy or control the vibration of the energy to fit the task instead of general all around energy.
Energy tends to be the easiest yet hardest thing to get down at times since there are so many different types and flavors of energy and ways it can be used with the three basics before it. Often for influencing immediate things it may be more expedient to rely on the conscious focus of the general energy in the use of just raw will.
Now the easiest practice is to focus on condensing energy into a ball in your hand until you can feel it then press into a command of how it should behave. Another use is to feel and push the energy along the path of your focus letting your intent passively program it. This is good for telepathic commands or screwing with technology often. Such as staring at someone you wish would get off the phone and focusing on their phone and it losing signal while pushing energy. It can be rather easy to pull that off.
More complex uses get into creation of energetic constructs and servitors but there are many resources on that a rather good one which does give a good grasp of multiple types of basic energy and exercises towards all these things would be Initiation into Hermetics. A rather easy to find book a simple search online will lead you to it.
Now where this all relates to results is rather obvious. Getting good at these skills will let you get some immediate results in certain situations and set you up for more long term less immediate uses of power. Now a thing which is often over looked is that even when all these things are observed and practiced properly you may not appear to get any results on a long term spell. However, the problem may not lie with the spell but your perception of the results which often go overlooked until much later after you have given up but then realize you had it right infront of you the whole time and either ignored it or took advantage of the result but overlooked its existence. You may cast a money spell for example but not get anything at all in terms of income however you may end up getting massive discounts where you didn’t before. Now if you think about it if you got discounts which could amount to getting something for free then how is that any different than getting the money and spending it on what you would have spent it on anyways? The spell worked you got more money than you would have gotten when you were going to spend it anyways. Instead of spending $50 you may only spend $25 and it would be the equivalent of a purchase would have made anyways and then immediately finding money on the street.
Now how could you capitalize on this even further? Well if you were aware of it you could have taken the chance to look for extra ways to save even more money or realizing the result have a good boost in confidence for the next time. Most of my money work very rarely manifests any income but instead gives me items and discounts on items I would have bought with the money anyways.
Another common annoyance is when you wish to curse someone and it seems to have no affect. No dramatic death or wound but absolutely nothing seems to happen. There is a very good chance that they are suffering just as greatly as you wish but they are doing so quietly keeping themselves composed and letting it fester within.
Same could apply towards healing a wound. You will see the wound and feel the pain and nothing will seem to be helping it but then later you realize in hindsight you healed a lot faster than you should have and much of it was in your head in addition to it probably looking a lot worse on the surface than it truly was.
It is entirely possible to psyche yourself out of seeing what you manifested or taking what you manifested without realizing it. Being aware of changes in your life and of new things will show a lot more opportunity and much of it can be built on even further if you recognize and act quickly enough. Now the key is to be aware in general but not obsess over looking for any changes of a specific nature. It is a good practice of mindfulness that will let you notice even mundane things you had not seen before. This is where control and focus come into. A calm quiet awareness in the moment not an obsessive checking for something different every 3 seconds.
Another failing is often you might be afraid to take what is given to you. The opportunity might seem more trouble than it is worth but you have to analyze if this is truly the case or just a personal bias you have not yet resolved and dealt with on your part. At times we are also told not to push our luck but there is often no harm in doing so if you have already secured the initial prize. You got the money you wanted through a discount but can you go and buy more stuff and really get your monies worth on it and take advantage of the cheaper cost?
Maybe you are speeding up how fast you are recovering from a broken bone and notice it is a lot faster and better. Why not work to make the bone heal even stronger than it would have and apply that to the rest of your body using the momentum you have gathered?
I simply feel that often not enough awareness and mindfulness is put forward into our lives at times and much of what we bring about can pass right under our noses as a result and our fear of trying something new of putting nothing but our own arrogance and pride at risk limits how we might get results for our work. I might have deviate a bit from my initial intent in this but I feel this will still be rather helpful to have.