Wealth and magickal practice

For the last couple of months, I've been thinking about why I am so successful on health but not so successful on wealth. By wealth, I mean money. I am not alone. I see many people who have been successful on many areas in magickal practice but not on money. There must be a reason for this.

One of the possible reasons I think is that money may be more sacred than other things in this world. Let's go back to history, where early temples were in fact granaries. A granary is a building where you place food.

Today, the primary reason why we work is food. We all have our day jobs for primarily one thing, to go to the supermarket and buy food. We do it with money. This can be a strong magickal connection between what is sacred and money.

So, when you try to materialize money, you are trying to manifest something very sacred, which is one of the causes that we are here. It is food that makes it possible for us to live.

Other reasons might be the notion of scarcity. When you manifest health, you don't cause any other person to become less healthy. However, when you manifest money, you are the cause of the fact that somebody will earn less. Suppose that you have a business about a certain sector and you manifest a successful business through magick. Suppose that you sell cars and you succeed in selling many, many cars. This suggests that other car sellers are selling less just because you sell more.

But again, the notion of being sacred about money holds valid here too.

This is just the beginning of a long brainstorming...

The difference between Law of Attraction and conventional magick

There was an anonymous comment on the last post and Ananael's answer to that. Let me quote them first:

Anonymous said...

I would appreciate more information on this subject of "unintentional manifestation." I've got some doozy examples: Walking up the sidewalk to a hospital front entrance for three weeks, everyday I noticed an older model black Range Rover vehicle near the edge of the side walk. Owning a "new" Silver Range Rover remains a manifestation I desire. After a week or so of noticing the older black Range Rover, I noticed that it's replaced by a new silver Range Rover exactly like the one I imagined and have plastered all around my home. Heck, I manifested the vehicle I wanted for someone else!

Another one: An older, wealthy gentleman interested in me, just like I wanted him to be and I wanted him to marry me and move to Virginia. He moves to Virginia, like I wanted him to but he marries another woman just like me. Again, my scenario exactly. But for someone else!

Oh, there are many other occasions too: my brother's trip to Vegas and the Wynn Hotel that happened for him exactly the way I wanted; my sister's trip to the salon I wanted to visit for a long time; a neighbor making a move exactly like I wanted. The list of these sorts of events "manifestation for others" has been seemingly endless for me!

Why am I accomplishing "magick" or "attraction" for others and not myself? Of course, these events did entertain me but I found them hurtful (because of their exactness) and they made me incredibly jealous. Fortuitously, these events did draw me to this blog and this entry because it was the subject of a burning question for me.

Ananael answered:

My question would be whether or not you have done a ritual for any of these things, or if you have just thought about them and kind of hoped they would come your way. In the former case, you need to examine and redefine your statement of intent, and in the latter case you need to start using actual magick instead of vaguely focused daydreaming.

While the "law of attraction" model can work if your thoughts are exceptionally clear, a problem with the method is that your desire for a specific outcome often gets mixed up with other aspects of your personality. The actual resulting "intent" can include all sorts of other information besides from the desire itself. One way that I could envision something like this happening in your case might be that you have enough talent to manifest the outcomes you want, but in some way you feel unworthy of receiving the benefits. So the things you visualize happen around you rather than to you.

If you are working formal rituals, make sure that your statement of intent explicitly mentions you receiving the thing you are conjuring for. "It is my will to summon a silver Range Rover" is not sufficient. A statement like that could have produced what you experienced since the Range Rover did appear. With this example, the statement would need to be modified so that it includes acquiring and owning said vehicle.

I had this happening in my personal experience too. I remember once I was using law of attraction to manifest a new notebook computer for myself and that has manifested for a friend of mine within two weeks. She didn't know about my intention.

I think it lies in what Ananael described as "...in some way you feel unworthy of receiving...". I am pretty sure about this. Here is a short relevant blog post: Psychotherapy can make you a better magician.

Here, we can see the use of entities. I understand that an entity you interact and delegate a certain job is performing far more better than your intention (I mean intention alone). Although you must imagine the outcome, formal rituals ensure that the outcome is not affected by your subconscious mind.

I turned those two comments into a blog post because I am impressed by that.

Opposite things may happen while a magickal operation is in progress

Previously, I have written about what to do when a magickal operation is in progress, and I tried to mention how to go about "forgetting" your work, not fretting about it, to hold your intention, etc. Now I want to talk about seemingly opposite things that may happen while a magickal operation is in progress.

When you put your magick into work, you have an intention to create change in the physical plane by using your forces in the astral plane. However, you can't always imagine the whole thing. Therefore, forces you use try to make it happen in several ways, including ways that pass through happenings that you don't actually intent to happen. Let's try to clarify that with a simplified example.

Suppose that there is someone you love at school and you are in your last year. You want to do something to keep in touch with him/her. You want to continue to see the person you love daily. You decide to practice magick with that intention. You put your operation into work and then you see that you have failed many exams and thus you have one more year at school so you can see your loved one daily for one more year.

I know the example is oversimplified. However this represents exactly what I want to explain. So, strange and unexpected things may happen during a magickal operation in progress. Most important reason to this is that you didn't imagine the whole process. If you would, less strange and unexpected things would happen.

An awful example to this can be found in the opposition to the famous "Secret". Some people claimed that using the Secret (the Secret is simply imagination) would cause unwanted changes in one's life. In the perspective I have described above, many unwanted, bad things can happen. The mechanism is this: You put an intention and you don't imagine many ways for it to happen. Then "the universe" or whatever you want to call it, tries to find ways to make it happen. Not all of those ways are compatible with your happiness.

So, the best practice would be to enhance your imagination to a point where you add a road map to your goal. If we talk about that using my oversimplified example, you should take into account that if you fail a couple of exams, you will continue to see your loved one and therefore, you should find another road map to achieve your goal. For instance, you can imagine him or her to be transfered to a school in your area.

Well, the example only takes the final outcome into account. There are also things that may happen while the magick is in progress. You may put your intention and "do" your magick and then you can observe things which are seemingly opposite to your imagined outcome. Be patient when that happens. Your magickal operation is in progress and that means it tries to find the best way to make it happen for you. Don't get stressed for what you see in a couple of days. Learn to become still and wait.

In some old schools, people work on a single magickal project for months. They wait for three waning moon periods or three dark moons. Three months in 2008 would look like a very long time for many people who want instant gratification with their magickal work however this is the truth.

I wish I could give more and more examples about this because this is a very important aspect of an ongoing magickal operation but there are many more things to post since I am just back from a vacation. I hope I can provide more examples on a third post about ongoing magickal practices.

What to do when a magickal operation is in progress

In one of my previous posts about sigil magick and thoughtforms, Ananael commented on how he 'forgets' about his magickal practice. He said that not obsessing about his magickal aim helps on the forgetting part. I decided to take this further and write notes as a post. He basically said this:

Not fretting about a magical operation in progress is my take on how the "forgetting" works as well. The time you spend obsessing about whether or not an ongoing magical operation will work really seems to diminish its effectiveness, though I'm not sure of the exact mechanism. It's almost like if you hold the form too tightly in your mind it can't get the work done that you charged it to do.

I agree with him and I want to add what fretting or obsessing about an ongoing magickal work just means that you don't believe in what you do. This is a shortcut to becoming unsuccessful in magickal practice because magick starts and ends in your mind. This holds true on every level of magical activity. When you do your work and then obsess about it afterwards, this is a clear sign of disbelief.

On first impression, not to obsess about your magickal work seems very difficult to some people. That's normal too and there are ways to overcome this. You can become pretty relaxed with practice and experience. One of the ways to get relaxed is meditation. You don't need to meditate deeply, just try to keep yourself calm.

Why does obsessing about your work affects your practice and why is this a bad thing? Well, you usually do magickal work to create physical change. It is usually something that you want badly (ok, not always but sometimes). Wanting something so much involves disbelief. You don't believe that it is going to happen or you don't believe that you are going to have what you want. Therefore, since your belief is a strong magickal force, your belief manifests the reality ending up with not having what you want. Because the request sent to a higher force (the universe, gods and goddesses, entities, your higher self or whatever you want to call it) contains just this information: that you don't believe in having a certain thing and in fact you don't want to have it. This is what magickal practice is all about.

There is another perspective tough. Steve Pavlina, who is a self-development guru and also a master on intention- manifestation process tells something different. In fact he doesn't disagree with what I tell here but he adds something called polarity. According to this polarity model, he thinks that it's okay to use your obsession as a force in manifesting what you want. His model can be shown in an example like this: Suppose that you want to attract or manifest money and you can't stop fretting about it. At this point, Pavlina says that one should stay in this fearful process and imagine what she wants in this emotional state. So, you will use your fear against not having what you want at the end while imagining what you want. Thus, you use your strongest energy at that moment.

In fact, this is nearly equal to high magick. Higher practices of magick and especially chaos magick involves using any and every kind of energy. However, if you are a beginner, I would always suggest keeping a high mood and transacting a positive energy for your magickal work.