The Art of Indirect Magick

Direct magick is the easiest way to get what you want. You perform a ritual to obtain a desire, and the desire comes to pass. But if there’s an area of your life that refuses to yield to magickal pressure, then you may want to use Indirect Magick.

With Indirect Magick, you perform magick for the feeling that you want, rather than focusing on what feels impossible. So if you’ve been trying to make more money, but deep down that just feels impossible for you, look at the feeling that having money gives you. Is it elation, security, a thrill, the sense of potential, or something else? It might be several things. If you can work out what the feeling is that you want to achieve, you can use magick to obtain that feeling. So rather than doing another money magick ritual, you would use magick to obtain the feeling of relief and security. When you take your focus off the money, the money manifests more easily.

One actor that I knew found a way to make this work. Like most actors I know, he struggled to find employment in local plays and minor indie film productions. Every time he went to an audition, he desperately wanted the role he was auditioning for, and nothing was going to change that. It was pure pressure and desperate desire.

As you probably know, one of the keys to magick is letting go of desire and avoiding lust for result. It’s OK to really want something, but if your magick is stained with desperation, you are actually feeding the magick with the energy of absence. You amplify the feeling of not having something.

My actor friend knew this, so he modified his rituals. Rather than working on getting the role, he focused on something just to the side of his result. From experience, he knew that every time he landed a decent role, he would go out to lunch with his agent, to celebrate. This would be a relaxed time, with lots of relief and laughter. So rather than doing magick to get a specific role, he performed servitor magick to get more lunches with his agent.

He knew that his agent wasn’t suddenly going to become more sociable. He knew that each lunch date meant success. But performing magick for a cheerful lunch was easy, and felt completely possible. Acting success felt painfully impossible, so he moved his focus to an enjoyable lunch. He felt no pressure when he pictured that lunch and the laughter. It seemed like such an easy thing to achieve. This magick worked wonders.

A couple I knew who’d been trying to buy a house, but failing to get a loan, stopped doing magick to convince bank managers and instead performed a ritual to have the feeling of a housewarming party. Yes, this was the same result, in a way, but it felt possible. This small self-deception can work. It was easy for them to picture a housewarming party. Much easier than picturing a tight-fisted bank manager yielding to their demands. It worked.

In any kind of emergency, what you’re often looking for is relief and a feeling of security. If you perform magick to attain that feeling, rather than focusing on the near-impossible problem, then you may find that the problem resolves in order to get you that feeling.

What magick do you actually use to get such results? The most adaptable magick is Chaos Magick and Servitor Magick, and this can be targeted directly at the feeling you want to create. I would also recommend working with The 72 Sigils of Power. In that book, you find rituals that work with feelings of peace, calm, joy, appreciation and relief, and these are the energies that fuel indirect magick. The Angels of Alchemy also contains rituals for personal transformation.