I was notified last night that this fight was lost. There just wasn’t enough activity to keep the machines running. Such a loss for this family and I have requested the help from those psychopomps and others to assist the family.
If you do enough magic, with enough complexity, you WILL fail at some point. More later.
It is easy to wonder and question when things don’t go like you want, especially when you could feel the power and willingness of entities to intervene on your behalf. It can make you question the ritual, the materials, the entities, … all of it.
You can second-guess yourself for as long as you want to. I wouldn’t encourage it, but ritual reflection is something we should all be doing to improve our own craft, in the ways that are meaningful for us and these may not reflect in other people’s practices or Occult view. The point of view and opinions of my Daoist instructor are not going to be the same as a traditional Western Ceremonial practitioner.
So, what can you do? Before that, I would actually take a moment to recognize that YOU lifted a hand to try to help. That’s important to recognize. We have a large community of talented magicians with a wide variety of skills and when someone pops on here with an issue, this same community takes time out of their day/studies to help in the way they feel appropriate for them. Some can walk into a dedicated ritual space to help and some can’t be that open about what they do.
I think it’s really important to recognize that in a world full of apathy and excessive business, YOU did what you could.
Like I said above, if you do enough rituals, with enough complexity, you will experience failure. But what does that mean? It could simply be the lack of the complete outcome you were wanting. It could be a partial, as it was with mine. It could be the utter silence of not seeing anything happen, but this could mean its still being worked out. Naturally, a negative outcome may also be considered one, but should consult a spirit or a reader to get a better idea. Another path may be better overall.
I said mine was a partial success. The child was expected to live and only the functioning was of concern (and the organs). Well, the brain function just couldn’t recover. The donatable organs did and those are being donated to bring prolonged life to other children in need. Mixed bag for me.
I do so many rituals, usually hard things by the time they bring them to me, that I had to take things like this as something that will happen. Yes, my heart is heavy for the family. I know and care for a direct family member. I have leveraged my relationships to help this family now grieve for a lost adult and grade school child.
Things like this are disappointing, but this doesn’t make me question magic, the ritual, or the entities I used. But I can say that if I had done NOTHING, I would wonder if I could have made a difference.
Use your influence. Cast your spells. You don’t have to tip the balance every time. Those times you do will sustain you through moments like these.