(This post was originally posted to my Patreon.)
Objectivity in Magic
There appears to be a widespread notion in modern magical communities that there is an objective way to do magic- that myths of the past defined everything that is, or ever was, or ever could be.
This is wrong.
I can’t count the amount of times someone who’s arrogance has overcome their intelligence has told me “you’re doing this wrong” or that “objectively speaking, (spirit) isn’t what you say it is”. These kinds of people act like what’s been written down and shared across space and time is the scope of what’s real when it comes to magic. They are categorically and completely incorrect, reason being a key axiom these doofuses apparently forget:
“The map is not the territory”.
Just because something’s written down in a book or public forum, doesn’t mean it’s accurate, or inaccurate. It doesn’t mean that history reflects reality when it comes to spirits, or that you can only apply other consciousnesses in the contexts they are recorded in across the magical spectrum. Assuming that consensus = reality, as opposed to consensus = consensus reality, is folly and a telltale mark of inexperience.
It’s especially glaring when the self-proclaimed sorcerers insist on this erroneous point of view, as if it has any standing. This is an example of people overestimating and overselling themselves and their practice in order to gain credibility in the public sphere. Aside from simple magical incompetence, present in a good deal of those that spout this ideology, where do these errors arise?
#1- Subconscious Programming
This is often found in the victims of organized religions’ advertising to the general populace, especially if children are brought into these cults. It makes the adherent believe in absolutes, extremes, and hard “black and white” descriptors of spiritual forces.
This error arises in tandem with the misunderstanding of the original purposes of myths and legends. They are the axiomatic map, and not the territory which they map; they are pointer-patterns which are set up to either direct towards energetic structures or away from them.
What’s little understood is that records of magical practice are also pointer-patterns, as no individual magician is capable of completely recording the spectrum of an entity’s existence in narrative form. This is because the vast majority of named mythical entities are far beyond just the pointer-patterns they have made appearances in. No written record can sufficiently cover the spectrum of all energies and events associated with an entity powerful enough to be recognized as a deity.
An even less understood aspect is that these written records do not directly access the total being due to the aforementioned inability to create a complete linguistically accessible map. When you do magic with a mythical being or record of magical practice, you access a version of the entity that is connected to the base energy used to create the pointer-pattern; you get a shard of a kaleidoscope, rather than the full device. Some entities even have sophisticated systems of contact which automate shallow magical work. It is the equivalent of speaking to a secretary’s answering machine rather than the director of the Board. The map does not lead to the heart of the territory, but instead, the outskirts.
“The territory” in this case, which is to say the complete range of energies and outcomes associated with one being, is incompatible with the process of making a reliable map, navigable through narrative, of the whole spectrum available.
But there’s a more nefarious reason than simple pigeonholing that can originate such ideas.
#2- Traps
Anything can contain a magical trap, from the air you displace while walking to the stuff you read in the library. Some of these are obvious in their effects, some are even outlined in the trapped objects themselves, but a rarer few are insidious in design and scope. People usually think of these as cursed objects, but, it gets a bit deeper than that.
The simplest kind of energetic trap can be likened to a slingshot or mouse trap. It is a basic impact directed at the target when a condition is met. In modern magic, these make up the vast majority of so-called “cursed books” designed by publishers or authors to prevent piracy. They lack punch and pizzazz, and aim all their eggs at one basket. At worst, these cause a big event to manifest- such as something important breaking, a car accident, etc- but can have lasting effects that would make it appear as if it was a curse. Rather, some healing can fix up the lasting damage from an impact.
A more advanced kind of trap would be consistent with a magical attack in function. The lasting effects of these can usually only be alleviated by healing, and require more powerful and deeper healing work to unravel the hooks of. In these instances, the first thing that triggers is the targeting system- if the consciousness does not meet the conditions necessary for the trap to remain inert, it will spring.
These attacks are often cyclical, once triggered, and follow an internal logic in regards to when the attack is dispensed. Such cycles can be solar, lunar, land, weather, astrological, personal (when event X occurs to/is initiated by person Y, respond with Z), or of specific creation by the designer.
Some myths, ancient and modern alike, are configured by the beings operant within them in the likeness of a magical attack in order to throw off others for whatever reason. Some myths are dead ends, stripped of any sort of energetic accuracy such that the pointer-pattern is no longer a pointer, it’s just a narrative pattern of its own.
The nastiest category of these traps would fall under the heading of cursed tales and myths. Unlike the surface presentations manifested by impacts and attacks, well designed curses don’t show any symptomatic manifestation or signs of their existence at first glance. At this level of sophistication and complexity, the trap itself likely has other traps within it and affecting it in order to prevent removal or offsetting.
It can be dangerous to try and debug a myth on your own, unless you’re very skilled with precise and delicate magic. This isn’t some half-assed copyright or anti-piracy curse I’m talking about, but a potential gear in the kingdom or agenda of a powerful spirit- don’t overestimate yourself or underestimate what you could be dealing with.
The why is simple, if insidious- the reasons for designing such a thing aren’t to harm those who view or interact with the myths, but to control (at the very least) the accessibility of the mythologized being by human magicians. They can also be created to turn those that interact with the myths into batteries for their operant beings, in whole or in part. Even worse, these traps can be set up in such a way that practitioners who interact with them can become bound into the mythical pattern.
What do I mean by this?
As such traps do not manifest detectable symptoms to their marks, it is remarkably difficult to know when one has been roped into such a pattern without outside assistance, such as from another practitioner or spirit. The mechanism here is one of reconfiguring your own energetic self and future- a word for it would be “destiny”. These curses can derail your magical and personal future onto whatever track of reality the designer aims the unsuspecting practitioner on. Whether it is good for you personally is not the concern of the setter; the pattern type is designed to turn you into something useful to its creator.
In other words, the narratives used to connect with some beings can be used against you in a way that alters your very own essence, as well as futures, in a way subtle enough to not trigger any noticeable changes or defense mechanisms. It is nasty work!
There’s another thing that could be at work in these situations though, and it isn’t always malefic.
#3- Honest Mistake
Yes, it’s possible to simply mess up in magic, from who you’re trying to contact to how you design your spells. For the purposes of this post, I’ll be focusing on the former.
There is a concept prevalent in the modern magical community that rituals to work with a specific entity have one or two general outcomes: you get through to the intended entity, or, an impostor or parasite interrupts the connection. However, there is an additional outcome which is innately tied into this style of work, which is little discussed: the pointer-patterns used to aim the practitioner in the direction of a specific entity aren’t necessarily at one consciousness, but a mythical identity, a character whose conditions and traits were outlined in a narrative pattern.
To say that “there is only one” of a named mythical being, just because it isn’t depicted as being more than one character, is dishonest. This is because pointer-patterns used to depict entities are not focused on the raw individual consciousnesses, but on traits of energy and conditions of experience/consciousness that are not unique to one being.
The number of consciousnesses that have the identity depicted in the pointer-pattern varies per iteration of the narrative. As the details of the mythical identity change, so too can the consciousnesses that meet the conditions required to be magically accessed as a part of, or from, the narrative.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover”, anyone?
The primary way of discerning what consciousness is operating through the mythical identity used to connect to it, is to go beyond the details used to describe the being. This is a shamanistic practice which, when utilized, acts as the knife separating out details of energy from traits of consciousness. There can be many Poseidons, multiple Hades, a few Zeuses, etc.
There‘s another angle to this concept that has even less widespread coverage in terms of texts and discussions: magic does not operate by the same temporal dynamics as we do.
This tidbit of information can be incredibly useful, if you know where to look. Since magic does not adhere to the same mechanisms of interfacing with time that we do, but is far more unrestricted, it can cause a disconnect between practice and results, including in spirit communication. This is due to magic crossing timelines and universes in its scope- just because the version of you that is creating the ritual is the one you are perceiving, doesn’t mean the version of you that you are perceiving through is the one that will receive the results.
This can be confusing and counter-intuitive at first, after all, you would expect the magic you do to apply to the stream of time you are perceiving. The primacy of magic in reality is not something to be understated or underestimated; this isn’t a game, it’s the fabric on which the forces of life are made manifest. Some aspects of making powerful magic provide reliable results will go against your basic instincts of what should and shouldn’t be- moving past this mental obstacle, rather than getting caught up in the logistics of something beyond the scope of human understanding in some aspects, is an important part of magical development.
To offset this temporal variability that can be quite commonplace, from accessing spirits in other timelines to not grounding results in your personal perception of time, ritual anchoring is recommended before engaging in important magic. How this is accomplished is up to you- anchoring talismans activated before rituals, meditations, rooting oneself to the magical beneath, are all viable methods of anchoring your work to the personal perceptive timestream.
And that about sums it up! 
