The Pathways of Magick

One of the best ways to get magickal results is to perform your magick, and then detach from the result. In short, you allow results to come, rather than lusting after them. For most people, this is the ultimate key to magickal success. This post may seem like repetition – because the subject has already been covered on the blog and in the books – but it’s an attempt to shed more light on a subtle truth that can enlighten your occult work. When you allow results to come, without forcing them, they come. Understanding this, and working with it on a practical level, can unleash your magick.

The main reason we tell people not to lust for result, is that it works. You will see countless posts on here, and on Facebook, where people say that the moment they let go of their lust for result, they got the result they were looking for. We aim for the practical, so this aspect of the magick must be emphasized. If you follow this blog, or read our books, you will know that we talk about this subject a lot, and with good reason. When you let go of the results, when you truly detach from the magick, the results come quickly. When you are patient, you don’t need to wait.

But why is this? If the spirits respond to your request, why can’t they just create the result for you?

The spirits we work with are not constrained by lust for result. When you perform angelic magick, for example, the angel responds. But for the result to manifest, you need to open the pathways to manifestation. The work is done, but you need to let the result into your reality.

When you open the pathways – by doing all you can to make the result come about, while simultaneously letting go of any desperate need for the result – the result comes. You hear many stories of people doing magick, and then all of sudden they get a rush of results at once, because they finally forgot about the magick. In time, you will find you don’t have to forget about the magick, because you can remain aware of it without hoping for a result. At first, though, forgetting the ritual can be a shortcut to success.

This mysterious need to get out of your own way is seen throughout art and the occult. When you get in your own way, there can be no inspiration. If you strain and struggle, you create more strain and struggle. Writers faced with a blank page know that it can be far more effective to simply start writing, than to strain for the best idea. This approach shows trust.

In magickal terms, trust is important. By letting go, and not lusting for results, you show that you have actually handed that side of things over to the spirits. You’re expecting them to do the magick, and expectation is more powerful than hope. If you lust, you’re showing that you feel the ritual is incomplete or ineffective. This feeling of doubt can pass into the magick. When you truly let go, it’s like signing off on your magick. You’ve given your commands, and you can now go about your business, knowing that the magick will work. This is very different to making a hopeful request that you keep checking up on. When you can attain a state of calm confidence, magick works faster and with more intensity.

Most of the books published by The Gallery of Magick sidestep the issue to an extent, by using emotional transmutation. During the ritual, you consciously change how you feel about the result. Doing this, even for a moment, opens the pathways to manifestation. This is a good starting point, and helps you to feel that the magick is real, rather than settling into hope and doubt.

Although people find ‘letting go’ to be quite difficult, it’s something you do all the time. Knowing this can make it easier.  When you order your dinner in a restaurant, you don’t keep checking to see if it’s coming. You just get on with your conversation, and the meal is there all too soon. So this genuine ‘handing over’ is important, but so too is putting in real-world effort. By putting in your own effort, you take your focus off the magick and put it on what you can contribute to the result. In a restaurant that means nothing more than placing your order and having a conversation. For magickal results it may mean doing more. The forces that work with magick work best when they work in harmony with your efforts. If you ask the angels for the inspiration to write a novel, all you need to do is start writing and you will find your inspiration. If you wait around for a good idea, you may have to wait for a long time. Your contribution to the result opens the pathways.

Real-world effort is important, but it is probably not as important as the calm confidence of genuine expectation that comes when you move beyond lust for result. When you become truly adept at magick, you can manifest results quite readily, with only the smallest real-world effort, so long as you get out of your own way.

Have you ever watched a baby trying to speak? It might copy your mouth movements for weeks and weeks. And then one morning, when you say hello, the baby says hello back at you without even trying. Or when you’re practicing a new guitar solo, you can practice and practice, but it doesn’t sound right until you take a day off and forget about it. Then you find you can play it without effort. Giving the new reality some space to manifest is better than continual practice and attention.

Magick should be performed with great diligence, focus and pleasure, but once it is over, it is over, and you should continue with your life. If you want to make money, do what you can to make money. If you want to create art, do what you can to create art. If you want to pass an exam, put in your best effort when preparing and sitting the exam, and then once the exam is over, forget about it. The last thing you want to do is keep checking the mail for a result. Checking, testing, and stressing about an outcome is the opposite of the confidence you need to obtain.

Sometimes, magick doesn’t give us the result we want, when we want it. It’s OK to acknowledge that you could do things differently next time – by asking for a result that is closer to your present reality, for example – but it’s also good practice to see such magick as being ‘in progress’. If you write off a ritual as a failure, the magick may close off, because you’ve imprinted a reality of failure upon it. When you accept that the result will come when it comes, you can get pleasant surprises long after a ritual was performed. Think of your rituals as investments that can mature beautifully and unexpectedly.

The spirits are not constrained by your lust for result. They will do the work if they hear you, and they will work with greater power if you also work toward the result. But once the magick is in motion, the result can only manifest if you make the appropriate room for it. Open the pathways and the result will come.