While my experience of magick as a sustained practice has begun recently, throughout my entire lifetime I have felt and experienced what I believe to be a benevolent fate that guides me towards what is best, which is often very close to what I hoped for, but different and usually better in significant and surprising ways.
I make no mystery of the fact that I started practising magick in the hope of bringing back an ex, I have learned and cast many a spell, spontaneously learnt taromancy and other forms of divination, and the result of my Solomonic endeavours have been intrinsically pleasant and instructive. But despite my best efforts, despite the positive omens gathered from multiple divinations, my result has not manifested. However, I am experiencing a long-desired reconciliation and closure, and right when my efforts reached their peak I have met another man that is strikingly similar to my ex in certain, seemingly positive respects, and seems strikingly better in other, more negative ones.
While I am ever thankful to God or whomever in their place, and to all the spirits I called upon and who responded so genuinely to my summons, while I am certain that these positive results are as much a gift from above as a product of my magickal workings, I cannot help but to wonder about the interplay between will, fate (assuming it is a thing, at this point I am more convinced of this than ever before) and the manifestation of what we ask and spellcast for, and of what is actually good for us.
So where is the line to be drawn? Is fate a force to be reckoned with that can nullify our magickal efforts or at least seriously mitigate and alter them, or is there a flaw in my magick?
This is all a matter of opinion, but I don’t necessarily believe in “fate” myself, or that events are predetermined as such.
Probability is certainly a factor, but I think in magic we should discard probability and focus on possibility. Take a look at things like Littlewood’s law, or the block world concept:
With the idea being that creation is finished, and we exist moment by moment at the crossroad of all possibilities and every possible outcome, it’s only our consciousness (the present moment) which slides around through all the intersecting paths of time.
With that said, it’s anyone’s guess why certain rituals work and others do not.
Again, completely my personal opinion, but I understand the mechanism by which magic works to be that (by ritual, petition, or whatever means), you impress a desired state or result into your subconscious, which then works to manifest that state or result into your perception of reality.
Your conscious mind is capable of undoing said work through doubt or obsession (lust for results) – “A man is what he thinks about all day” – which is why the advice given is to avoid lust for results by not thinking about the ritual, or if you do think about the situation, to simply feel gratitude and acknowledge that it is done.
There seems to be something intrinsic to love magic that ties up all our thoughts about the other person. I would say many people, even those who have other options, a strong concept of self, etc., still fall prey to doubt/obsession when it comes to lovers, perhaps because it’s difficult not to experience rejection from someone you were or wish to be intimate with, emotionally and/or physically, as a commentary on who you are as a person, and that can pierce right into your subconscious and affect how you think of yourself.
If there are conflicting values in your subconscious, even ones you aren’t aware of, then the most likely outcome is that things stay exactly as they are (e.g. you remain single). Alternatively, reality bends around you in line with whichever subconscious belief currently has the most footing, but as your mind vacillates between different beliefs, you get partial or impermanent manifestations, or you see results only to have them followed by setbacks.
There’s likely a bit more to it than that, but that’s how I see it.
With the above in mind… if your subconscious was sufficiently impressed with the kind of relationship you want, this could in some ways explain your outcome.
Also, depending on the timeline, you could still find your ex will come back to you seeking reconciliation at some point in future… at which point you could very well have lost interest in him.
First of all, thank you so much for your detailed and informative reply!
I am truly fascinated by this perspective (which I guess is prevalent among modern magicians), particularly because my experience is just so different. I always felt like my will was being taken into account but also “interpreted” in a sense, which has always led me to obtain not exactly what I wanted but something of the same kind and actually genuinely better, i.e. something that it made me genuinely happier than the alternative I had picked would ever have (a truth I often discovered a long time after the result had manifested). Part of the fault lies in the fact that my perception of what is best for me is obviously partial and restricted to what I know and choose, sometimes out of pure stubbornness, even if I know it’s not what would make me happiest. My choice to attempt to win my ex back is a perfect example: I knew all too well that, had he come back, it would have probably been bad, hellish even.
While I totally get the idea of lust for results and all that it entails, I really struggle to see it as a working factor of my own experience. Most the things I believe to have manifested or at least corroborated through magick I always saw as coming to be precisely by virtue of my constant rumination and prayer, together with active engagement in the physical plane. Manifesting a precise career often takes a huge stroke of luck or, in this case, magickally induces synchronicity, but also constant effort and planning. Perhaps all this stems from the fact that I don’t really subscribe to the conscious-unconscious divide as I see it as a quasi-arbitrary and vague distinction from a neuroscientific point as well.
This too is an excellent point! I feel things turned up the best way they could given the constraints of reality. My relationship had to end anyway, so it was best for it to end for good (at least for the time being, who knows about the future), while my call for love was answered through the manifestation of this new person in my life.
I will definitely be keeping your points in mind as a reference in my future observations on the topic. Again, thank you so much for this!