The Abundance of Magick

There is a question that goes to the very heart of magick. That question is one that I am asked almost every day: How much magick can I perform at once? This is so much more than a practical question, and hints at the true power of magick.

Magick is about imposing your will on reality, rather than yielding to fate and circumstance. But to impose your will you need clarity, so magick also gives you the opportunity to reflect on who you are, where you want to go, and who you want to be. By dancing between reflection and results you find out what you want, and then perform magick to bring about the change you require. If you discover aspects of yourself that you do not like, you can change them with magick. If you discover hidden depths and previously unknown desires, magick can guide you to a more fulfilling life, continually unfolding as you make new discoveries about what brings you excitement and satisfaction. This is the abundance of magick.

Many people buy all seventeen of our books, and some feel quite overwhelmed, because there is so much magick that you could use. After all, it took me several decades to explore all this magick, but you can buy it all in one afternoon, and discover these secrets in just a few days. For some people this is not overwhelming, but the opening of a gateway. You may see the potential of magick, and then you want to change everything at once. You know the magick can be real for you, and so you want to know: How much magick can I perform at once? The answer helps uncover some useful magickal techniques.

In a previous post I made it clear that piling magick on top of magick, through desperation for a result, is not the most effective way to get what you want. Carefully chosen magick, performed with calm confidence, is an effective way to get magick to work. Working ten different rituals because you want to force a result to come about is not ideal, because it fills your work with fear and doubt and desperation. Despite this, there are ways to use many rituals at once.

Some people assume that if you work lots and lots of magick, you’re less likely to lust for result. As Adam Blackthorne pointed out in The Master Works of Chaos Magick, the traditional approach is to create a stack of sigils for lots of different results, so that when you come to ‘fire’ them in a ritual, you have no idea what you’re doing the magick for. It’s an interesting hack, with some potential, and it’s meant to bypass your lust for result. But in reality, you always know what you want. If you’ve gone to the trouble of creating a ritual, you have a strong desire and you’re not going to forget about it. This is why I often say that overcoming lust for result is not about forgetting, so much as placing your attention with intention.

When you perform magick to improve your business, your everyday focus will remain on improving your business. You can’t forget your business, or the magickal change you want, and that is fine. What you want to avoid is waiting for the magick to work, yearning and hoping for the result to come quickly. If you keep checking, and asking yourself did the magick work yet? that’s when your innate disbelief in the magickal process can prevent it from manifesting. When you bake a cake, you put it in the oven and you leave it there. If you keep checking every five minutes, you let the heat out of the oven and the cake collapses. If you wait until you can smell the cake – when it’s obvious that it’s cooked – then you can have your cake and eat it.

Performing a mass of rituals purely to avoid lust for result is not, in my opinion, the best way to go about things. But what has become very clear to me is that magick works in different ways for different people. On the day that The Angels of Alchemy was launched, one reader shocked me by saying he’d performed eight rituals and within a few hours already had results from three of them. Equally, during the same month, I heard from several experienced occultists who told me they were taking a break from magick for some days or weeks. Sometimes, you need to make space for the ordinary world. Sometimes, you want to throw yourself into magick. The experience is completely personal.

As such, it is almost impossible for me to say how much magick you can perform at once. But in asking the question, you begin to gain a perspective of the change you desire. You may look at the magick on offer and feel a desire to discover more about yourself, to attract more of what you want and to change who you are. In looking at the potential of magick, you journey into yourself.

In practical terms, it’s wise to find a balance between an overall vision of change, as well as working on the details. If you want to make money, it makes sense to create an overall charming effect, as well as targeting individual areas of finance that are specific to you. So, in Magickal Riches that would mean using The Master Money Ritual to charm your overall finances, and then working specific rituals to target financial areas that appeal to you. If you’re wise, you might also want to use The Angels of Alchemy and The 72 Sigils of Power to refine aspects of yourself that may be preventing manifestation. This doesn’t mean you’re just doing more magick, but that you’re expressing your magick will in a broad way and in a targeted way.

Can you protect multiple people, influence multiple people, or bind multiple people? Yes, the magick can always be applied to more than one person, but it may not be as powerful. When directed at one individual, you often get the strongest result. So it is down to you to weigh up how badly you want a particular result, and how rapidly you want it to come about. If you are trying to influence a group of people to make things go your way, using The 72 Angels of Magick, you might want to charm the group with one ritual, but then directly influence an individual within that group using another ritual. You might do this all at once, or complete one ritual before starting the next.

Can you start a new ritual while still doing another? Yes, you can, but make sure you have focus and clarity. Do you have the energy? Are you rushing things? And will you even notice the results if they come about? More importantly, will you be able to act on the results? One thing you will notice, as you practice magick, is that when you enjoy your results, by experiencing them and feeling gratitude for them, you get results more easily. If you don’t even notice the changes or opportunities provided by magick, that can lessen future results.

The experience is your own. You may find that you get the best results when you perform lots of rituals at once for a single purpose. Or you may find it works best when you perform rituals for lots of varied results, or when you perform rituals in sequence, taking breaks of days or weeks. You may even find that using carefully chosen rituals, only when you really need them, is the ideal process for you. There is no substitute for personal experience, and as you work with the occult you will get a sense of how the abundance of magick fits in with you and your life.

If you are drawn enthusiastically to magick, then feel free to work a lot of magick. But try to find some balance between exploring yourself and your needs, as well as seeking external results. The best way to get results is to find out what it is you actually want, so combining books such as The Angels of Alchemy (for personal transformation), with The 72 Sigils of Power (for personal insight), with something like The 72 Angels of Magick (to get the external result), may be the best way to go. Or, you can just use one book. Many people have purchased nothing other than Words of Power, and get all the results they need.

Working on twenty things at once might not be as wise as seeing magick as a steady, calm, lifelong project. You don’t need everything to change at once. It’s better to look back at a year of successful magick, than to become frustrated after three weeks of frantic magick. But, as I say, it is personal, and if you find that doing more magick works for you, then go ahead.

There is an abundance of magick, and it can bring you abundance, on a personal, material and spiritual plane. Be wary of doing so much magick that it feels like a chore, or gets in the way of your life. Be wary of losing concentration, and be wary of trying to force a result. If you can paint broad strokes, and pencil in the details, you can create a life that is a masterpiece.

– Damon Brand