There’s an old saying in magick that goes something like this: Know, will, dare and keep silent. The basic idea is that you should learn magick well, know your true will, be willing to accept the consequences of your magick and keep your mouth shut.
Some people believe that all occult work, whether performed alone or in groups, should be carried out in absolute secrecy. Secrecy has power, but it might not be as important as people think. To some degree, it’s optional. Once your magick is complete, sharing your success can actually make magick work more effectively.
Sometimes secrecy is nothing more than a lifestyle choice. Most of my friends have no idea that I do magick. Also, I work as a novelist, so I use a pseudonym. Let’s imagine I was a children’s’ novelist. Would I want all those parents knowing that I was summoning up strange entities before sunrise? Not really.
If you’re not bothered about what people think then it doesn’t matter if people know you’re an occultist or that you just performed a ritual. The thing you need to keep secret is the magickal result you are seeking.
I can’t say that I’ve deliberately experimented with this, but given that I took up magick when I was twelve years old, I’ve been through a lot of magickal situations, from the glorious to the disastrous. At times, I’ve openly let people know that I’m an occultist for years at a time. At other times, I’ve pretended that I know almost nothing of the occult. If anybody heard rumors that I ‘did magick’ I’d say that I could do a few card tricks. That seemed to satisfy people. Nobody wants to believe that a mild-mannered novelist is out in the woods at midnight chanting to the gods.
Of course, I never am out in the woods at midnight chanting to anything, but that’s probably what they’d picture.
What I noticed is that whether people know about my activities or not, it had no effect whatsoever on my magickal results. I usually keep a magickal diary, and at times I have kept one with extremely detailed reports. It doesn’t take much analysis to see that being open about being an occultist had absolutely no effect on the success of my workings. Secrecy was not important after all.
When it comes to results, though, it’s a different matter. If you tell somebody that you’ve performed a ritual to make more money from a particular venture, you’ve stated your desired result out loud, and that means you might get the opposite result. You don’t just get less money than you wanted – the venture fails completely.
There is something about revealing your magickal intent that stops it coming to pass. This isn’t always the case, but it happens often enough that most occultists suggest that you shouldn’t go around bragging about your latest ritual.
I will discuss the reasons behind this in my book about living a magickal life, when I eventually get around to writing it, but to a degree I think it’s quite mundane. It’s not all that different to a writer telling you all about the screenplay they’re planning to write. As soon as they tell you, the energy’s all gone and the doubts creep in and they never bother to write it after all.
All writers know that you keep your mouth shut until the writing is done, or the energy dissipates. I think it’s the same with magick. Sometimes, the sheer weight of a roomful of people looking embarrassed at your magickal desire is enough to make your magick collapse.
Secrecy is powerful, but you don’t have to be completely secretive.
You can tell people that you’re doing magick, and nothing bad will happen.
If you have one close friend or partner that you trust, telling that person usually has no detrimental effect. (It has to be a good, close, trusting relationship.)
You can talk about your magick online and nothing bad will happen, if you keep out the personal details. So if you come to a forum such as this and say, ‘I’m trying to seduce my boss using magick,’ or ‘I’m trying to build my marketing company through money magick’, nothing bad will happen. Just don’t name names.
Once a magickal result has come to pass, however, there seems to be a positive benefit in sharing the news. When the magick is done, secrecy is the last thing you want. Of course, I could just be saying this so you’ll tell people about my books, post great results and write lovely reviews on Amazon. That’s not why I’m telling you (honest!), but sharing stories of magickal success makes magickal success come more easily.
We’ve known this for a long time but it became very clear during the past twelve months. Everybody in The Gallery of Magick has noticed a massive improvement in all our magickal work, as well as our lives in general, since we began sharing this magick publicly just over a year ago. We’re still keeping our identities a secret, but sharing the magickal methods and results just makes life better and better.
When you feel the urge to tell somebody about a ritual you’ve done, try to be patient and wait until you get your result. Look forward to telling them about the result, knowing that it will come to pass. That can actually help the to speed the result into manifestation.
Keeping secrets gives you power, but you don’t have to keep them forever.
– Damon Brand
