The Power of Magickal Desire

Magick is about desire. When you perform magick, you are electing to change reality to your liking. The more potent your desire, the more likely you are to get a magickal result.

I have often said that to get magick to work you need to adopt a degree of non-attachment to results. If you lust for results desperately, they evade you. But when you work with extreme determination, magick responds to the power of your will. This seeming contradiction goes to the very core of what magick is about.

In general, there’s no doubt that a casual confidence in your magick will help, whereas desperation and doubt can lead to failure. When I discussed this at length in a recent post, a reader pointed out to me that this makes magick potentially difficult, because the things we perform magick for are often very potent and the need is strong and real – you may need to win a court case, solve an urgent problem, or make a relationship work. While it is true that these needs are emotionally potent, in most cases, it remains true that avoiding desperation is the key to magickal success.

Ironically, this is also why an unyielding determination can work for you. When you work towards a goal with extreme resolution, you are doing so not out of doubt or fear, but out of certainty that your longed-for reality must come into being.

There is a great difference between yearning, and setting out to achieve a goal no matter what. When you decide to achieve a goal, no matter what, because you know it must be a part of your reality, then magick and reality respond accordingly.

When I started writing seriously, before I was even a teenager, I was enthusiastic. Only when I was a few years older did it become clear to me that I absolutely had to be a writer. Nothing was going to stop me. And nothing did stop me. I used magick, and I used determined effort. I longed to be published, and I needed that result, but I was so certain that I was meant to be a writer that I never doubted my potential for success.

This does not mean I was destined to be a writer. We choose our future and make it come into being through imaginative effort and magick, without a sense of strain or struggle. The goal may require intense effort and determination, but it is not a struggle. When you work toward a goal in this way, you are aligning reality with your true will.

When you have a determination that comes from the essence of who you are, and who you want to become, it is more powerful than when you detach from your lust for result.

To know your true will, look to your emotions. It is important to feel the full spectrum of emotions. It’s sometimes assumed that because we work with gratitude and emotional transmutation, our magick is all about positive thinking. It is not. Overall, you should begin to be a happier person when you use magick, but you are still meant to feel a full range of emotions. Magick should not make you a grinning fool, but somebody who enjoys the pleasures of life, while fully experiencing the pain and discomfort brought about by people and circumstance. Only by feeling the negative emotions and acknowledging their pain, can you know that they are in conflict with who you are. And then you can go about using magick to re-order reality to be in accordance with your true will.

When you truly know what you are seeking, and when you know that it comes from the deepest part of who you are, and who you want to be, your determination can empower your magick. When your magick is complete, it should be released, trusted, believed in and essentially forgotten, so that you direct your determination towards achieving your goal, rather than wishing for a result. When you do that, your magick will be given the pure energy and focussed direction required for manifestation.

– Damon Brand