Why some magic succeeds while another doesn’t

Psychology and Philosophy in Magic
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Good weekend to everyone…

In my life, magic has a stabilizing effect,
So I often use it to achieve things that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.

That’s why I spend a long time thinking about why some magical workings hit their mark,
while others fail.

Why do some working of magic succeed while others fail?

It would be useful to know for any magician why that is.

What I’ve found is that magic solves problems.
To solve a problem one needs the correct tool
,a correct direction where that tool is aimed at
And a expertise in using the specific tool in that specific direction.

So, what’s this tool? Take baneful for instance, the basic tool is a hex or a curse and it’s aimed at a target

or any other area of magic and you’ll see it’s problem solving, similar to engineering/programming or many other applied sciences.

If the aim is off of if the tool is wrong, or the expertise is lacking is part of the reason why an operation/working doesn’t succeed.

What do you think and why?

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There’s an idea I quite like that is expressed by the occult author ‘Ophiel’ in some of his works which is that this material world is actually condensed astral light. The point here is that it is not separate from the spiritual, although it is different, being very dense. With it being very dense, it can be a bit hard to influence, because it doesn’t move as easily as a more pure spiritual “substance”. And in my experience, spirits seem to have a fairly easy time influencing things like fire, and air, but I reckon water is quite a bit more difficult, and earth all the more difficult. Although I also believe that spirits drive the entire cosmos and all events as well. But I believe Ophiel also means to say through this unity of the material world with the spiritual that you also need to work materially towards your goals. You need the actual skill as well. So, it’s not going to perform crazy miracles.

Now, already at the start of my magickal practice, I noted I had a 70-80% success rate with Angelic Magick, and I believe this is in part because I had the wisdom to know what I could reasonably accomplish, and what was a bit too far to reach. In Marsilio Ficino’s ‘Three Books on Life’, he says regarding the power of the Fixed Star Capella and their Herbs and Stones: “… these they trust as helping towards greatness and the favor of princes, unless perchance they be deceived in their opinion.” (Hess, Regulus; Warnock , Christopher. De Quindecim Stellis: The Comprehensive Translations of Hermes on the Fifteen Fixed Stars (p. 111). Renaissance Astrology . Kindle Edition.)

So, if you don’t have noteworthy qualities that will get you noticed by the powerful, this talisman will not help. But if you do, then it will certainly help you to become noticed and to have their favor. I think that ties into the union between the earthly world with the spiritual worlds above.

But I think there’s a lot of reasons why magick fails. Sometimes other forces just work too strongly against the direction of the magick that it doesn’t succeed, and sometimes you don’t connect with the spirits, or the inner state of the cosmos is not favorable for the working, etc.

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Part of my deal with King Belial is publishing new material on TOM everyday, so I’m making an effort although it’s late for me here.

Being exhausted, being a space cadet, not knowing what exactly you want out of the occult workings.

Not learning from your experience and not documenting your work, meaning you don’t know what exactly you did and how effective it was.

Not understanding the spell you’re using and not
putting enough emotions into your workings are also
common reasons for failure.

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Keeping with the deal and concentrating on one thing:
Thanks to @DarkGodofQlippa for clarifying this-
Success or failure can depend on your relationship with the spirits: whether they respect you or think you’re a pushover. If they think you’re a pansy, then they won’t honor agreements between you and will
Take from you without giving back.

On the other hand if you have a friendship with the infernals, as few magicians do, I think that maybe I’m starting to have one with prince Orobas, then they
Will help you more and quicker and it’d be easier to evoke them.

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There are dozens if not scores of variables when it comes to performing magick, so answering this question is a bit difficult. But I’ll give it a shot, from my own perspective and history. I would say the factors that affect one’s magick most are, in no particular order:

  1. Proximity / Probability
  2. Timing
  3. Attitude

Proximity, probability, or your “sphere of influence”, is how close you are to a situation that you wish to change. The closer you are, the more likely your effectiveness. For example, it would be easier for me to curse a coworker that I see at the office every day, whereas it would be difficult to cast a love spell on a celebrity I’ve never met who lives in a different country and is immensely popular.

Timing is one thing that trips a lot of us up. Putting time limits on results can be fruitful, but generally is not helpful, unless you’re well-equipped to deal with not getting a result in a certain timeframe. I have in the past asked spirits for a kind of general window of time for a result, and those have been accurate, give or take a week or two. If you are casting for a specific situation or a specific person, then it’s advisable to either give yourself a lot of leeway (for the former) or to know their schedule very well (for the latter). For example, if you wish to pass an exam that is occurring 2 months from today, you’d be better off casting for that result NOW, rather than waiting until a few days before the exam. But if you are a casting for a person, the more you can gather about their general schedule and habits (note: through interaction, I mean — not by being creepy) the better your results are likely to be. For the latter, I’ve personally had results in under five minutes at best, and around 5 hours at the longest. But that ties into point #3:

Attitude. By this I mean your mental whereabouts on a scale of “depressed and anxious wreck” to “complete confidence and certainty”. The general consensus is that you should perform magick and then avoid thinking about it at all costs. That is not always possible, although it can become so with practice. But if you are unable to stop thinking about your magick, then you should be making absolutely every effort possible to convince yourself that the outcome will be good and favourable. If you are dwelling on a ritual and thinking “it’s no good, it won’t work” or wondering how the universe could possibly align to give you what you want, that is bad.

While I certainly don’t agree with “toxic positivity”, as in pushing your emotions down and forcing yourself to act happy — I believe one does have to be aggressively optimistic, especially at the outset. You simply can’t allow yourself to dwell on failure. If you think of your result, you must think of it as though it’s inevitable. If anything it’s even better to think of it in the past tense, as though you are recalling a memory. If your magick happens to not work, you’re welcome to feel sad or annoyed about it. But don’t shoot yourself in the foot by performing a ritual and then immediately spending your time obsessing over why it won’t work.

One of the most depressing days of my life (as in considering throwing myself off the balcony quitting magick altogether) was also one in which I decided to be aggressively optimistic, and dedicated every conscious moment to affirming my results. I bullied my brain into thinking what I wanted it to think. Did it work? Yes it did. Twice in one day, in suspiciously fortuitous circumstances. :call_me_hand:

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Failing can be because you’ve picked the wrong tool for the job: using spirits instead of creative imagination. Or aimed it at the wrong target,
For example aiming a baneful spell against someone’s spiritual body that’s strong instead of their physical body that’s weak.

It can be because your target has strong defenses and you haven’t neutralized them before attacking.

Or You attacked without planning.

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I do like that! That is also one factor that comes into play, although it also depends on the spirit, since spirits are complex and varied, but it’s helpful in general. It’s important when it comes to spirits who partake in business transactions, like the Demons of the Goetia, and many Earthly spirits. In my view, this does not apply to the Gods, however. Rather, they cannot be bribed. After all, everything you could give them already belongs to them. They cannot be convinced. Rather, they give everything and create everything because it is in their own nature to do so, it is out of their love for the world and their benevolence. Similarly, the Universe does not need these Stars and Planets and the life that arose within it, the Universe would be perfectly fine with relative emptiness (Well, in theory). But, it’s simply in its nature that it produces all of these things.

While you can’t convince the Gods, they will never curse you because another magician made a deal with them to curse you (And Plotinus actually had an interesting example of this in his life). So, I think it’s a good rule to be careful of committing to spirits who can be swayed, just as the same goes for people. But in any case, gifts to the Gods is also helpful! This as a display of gratitude is helpful and brings one closer to their light. But I mean here to say that this is also more complex with spirits, some spirits you can make business deals with, and with friendship they view you as a reliable business partner, but with beings like the Gods they give simply out of their benevolence.

I also like @Veil’s response, with how there are many variables that come into play. These days, I personally have some skepticism as to how important it is to keep the working out of your mind, as a side note here, although it could certainly be important, I’m not sure, I don’t really worry about it myself. But it’s certainly helpful in most cases, not necessarily because of the magick, but also for your own sake.

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All excellent points @Dankquanicus @Veil

What I want to add to the discussion is:
Like @Heathen_Hermit said and @DarkGodofQlippa added in a recent discussion magic often fails because the egregore it created is incompatible with the witch’s personal values and isn’t strong enough to stand on its own.

I never thought about it like that. It brings me to an interesting point. Why not program your subconscious using nlp and/or hypnosis with the correct intent you’re pursuing and bypass your conscious doubts?

Why not work with another magician who’s more experienced to program the egregore?

Also, my thoughts are that group ritual often fails because the teammates don’t cooperate, or there’s a rivalry hidden or apparent or just the energies of the group members are incompatible.

Groups are stronger than individuals often times a coven of enough intermediates can take on a master.

Your magic can also fail because you’re working against too big a group of people, let’s say the wills of thousands of regulars if you’re part of a group of masters, or even 20/30 beginners if you’re an intermediate.

The physical world where magic manifests is a numbers game…

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To continue in the same vain,
The material world is the world of numbers

Magical manifestation requires that the qualitative intent, will of the magician, in the highest spiritual world becomes numerical measurable effects on the ground in the material world.

For us to do magic and effect this reality there must be an energetic link between our physical acts
In our temple and physical ocurrentes in the outside world.

So, how do we create this link?
Again, I’m partly drawing on the excellent interview
between @DarkGodofQlippa and @Heathen_Hermit , partly my own UPG and partly from The curse material info is taken from V.K. Jehannum’s
excellent video about curses on his YouTube channel:

You start at the highest world that’s the world of spirit in the macro and the will, the divine spark in the micro one. You have to really want an outcome to your core. Let’s take a person at work you don’t like, but don’t hate v. your nemesis who’s stolen your wife and kids.

In the first case you’ll probably not really want to curse the person, while in the second you probably will.

Then, we go down to the mental plane in macro and your thoughts in micro. You have to think about the outcome, devise a plan from the example above are you going to use a jinx, a hex, a curse, a death curse or an obliteration rite?

Probably the coworker if you wanna do anything then it’s a simple jinx, stroke of bad luck: a bad day/week.

With your nemesis it’s probably at least going to be a curse.

Then, it needs to go down to the astral plane in macro and in micro your emotions. Some say you need to be stoic for the magic to work. I disagree,
because emotions are the fuel for your magic and power it. For an effective curse, especially one not using entities, that needs more power/juice
To get the job done. To much fuel, or the incorrect fuel can damage/destroy the car/magic as we all know.

Afterwards, it goes to the etheric plane, plane that permeates the physical and holds it together in the macro, this I learned from @DarkGodofQlippa, all manifestation of all magic must go through it. In the micro this is the plane of the subconscious urges, hunches and drives, the reptilian brain if you will.

Now from this plane it rises to the material one and either manifests like the magician intended or not. If it doesn’t one of the links in the above chain is broken.

I’ll talk about it in my next post…

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Let’s take breaking the link between the mental and spiritual planes or your will and your thoughts.

Try this: don’t think of a pink elephant.
What happens we cannot stop thinking of it why?
Although we want to not think about it, our subconscious mind or etheric world just won’t let
Us, it simply doesn’t understand the word no.

That’s why I’m magic it’s usually better to think of what you want to happen and not what you don’t want to.

The second disconnect is between our mental and astral worlds or our thoughts and our feeling. Like if I’m thinking about putting a love spell on someone, but I feel almost nothing for her and think we’ll be good together on some theoretical level… I’m lacking the fuel for the working, I’m not invested in the result.

Some might say it’s good, because I’m not lusting for results. But I disagree. Even on a mundane level I’ll spend less time and energy working on it.

Let’s do the last two points if we’re magicians-for-hire.

The more we get in the shoes of the client and channel his hate/love/disgust or what have you to an extent the more our magic profits.

A car without gas won’t go. You can try pushing it by force, but your odd of success are slim…

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I’ll say, I’ve done workings where at least in part I haven’t been invested in some of the results/petition, but it still manifested powerfully.

But in general, I would agree that it is good to have desire and will.

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The third disconnect is between the astral and the etheric realms or the emotions and urges.

Sometimes, like after a tough breakup we feel love for our ex, but in the subconscious we hate them
And want to get back at them for hurting us.

We feel conflicted, so if we attempt ourself to get them back using magic, the attempt will probably fail
Because we really want to hurt them deep down
And do not really love them in our reptilian brain.

The forth disconnect is between the etheric and the physical: we have the urge to find love, but don’t do
Anything about it. We don’t go out, we don’t socialize
We don’t go on dating apps etc.

This is something no amount of magic can solve, because most magic as other areas of life should be supported by concrete physical actions in the real world.

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What’re some other reasons magic fails?
It can be done at the wrong time and at the wrong place.

What do I mean by that?

Planetary hours are important, for example a luck working gets extra juice from being done on a Thursday the day of Jupiter in the hour of Jupiter.
And shouldn’t be done on a Saturday especially in the hour of Saturn because he’s the lord of time and inertia.

By place I mean, orientation of the practitioner on the altar: mainly north, south, east and west.

The place you start the working in the place you end it

Whether you invite the spirit you’re evoking to the triangle or not. The direction you start and end constructing your magical circle.

What influences on the physical plane the success of the workings?
The sequence of steps of your ceremony: do you start with banishing your space from unwanted influences, do you empower yourself with mantras, do you have a logical structure to all your ceremonies or you wing it haphazardly?

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I’ll say here, all astrological conditons come into play, although the Planetary Hours are a great help! (And are good for electing any activity, not just magical works)

Take a look at the full elections I used and observed here for gardening:

While the Platery Hour was certainly a good help, the rest of the Heavens still come into play, and in that case signified the trouble with eventual success.

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What’s another common reason for failure?
Lust for results. In my life I sometimes wanted outcomes so much it interfered
with them manifesting.

Sometimes being invested is actually a good thing.

What are some other reasons?

Ignorance, not doing enough research before doing the workings. Undertaking summoning entities
you haven’t been introduced to: although this is not strictly necessary, but it does help for the success of your evocation.

Working with spirits you don’t jibe with…

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