Non-Emotional Magic

One of the biggest differences between my practice and most magical practices/systems publicly available is the lack of almost any emotion. You read about it in beginner books, of feeling that strong desire or the emotion from the positive outcome. I think it should be weaned off of.

Ah, Norse, you’re being a patronizing asshat again… Maybe, but it’s one of those things I think are important to go from being a good magician towards the path of being a great one. I think it’s a key indicator of genuine progression towards the elusive goal – becoming Magic.

I don’t particularly care how many disagreements I get from this concept. I’ve lived it for years now. Only just enough to flavor the energy being used for the ritual at hand. The energy should come from elsewhere – another indicator of progression.

There is a persistent elephant in the room regarding excessive emotion and magical practices. You’ll have less of it when you’ve done your shadow work, real shadow work that results in significant change. Many magicians have wells of traumatic experiences we can draw from for magical workings, but those dry up quite a bit with legitimate shadow work, self-reflection, and changing behaviors. This is a way to continue to grow in genuine power and progress magically, without some of the repercussions that can occur from accessing these emotions tied to these traumas.

And how can this be accomplished? Weaning. By learning to access other sources of energies and then using skill to flavor this energy with the intent as it’s focused and sent outwards to manifest. There are a few things I would suggest practicing with to help refine this aspect of your practice. I didn’t read these anywhere, so if they’re listed some place, I’d be interested in reading that source. I still refine my practice, too.

1. Set the intent at the beginning of the ritual to allow the ritual to fire itself off on its own when the proper amount of energy has been gathered for a successful attempt/outcome. Set this intent as the ritual starts. Let the working fire off, even if you aren’t “done” with the ritual or think it’s premature.
2. Open and use sigils and their energies to practice drawing from external sources of power/energy that are close to what you’re looking for in your ritual. Opening Beelzebub’s sigil for a decaying ritual, for example.
3. Practice taking from natural sources, like the Sun, Moon, or similar.
4. Practice with rituals for other people or for Causes you don’t feel strongly about. This allows you to develop the new practical aspects of this and get the timing or procedure down before it’s needed for a real-world problem you do care about.
5. Identify which parts of different rituals are used for enhancing or focusing the magician and which provide actual assistance to the power of the working. Your opinions on this may change over time, in both directions.
6. Remember those times where you performed magic unintentionally. Most of us have had these experiences early in Life and only identified them as such later on. It’s important to remember that we didn’t use the same structured, sometimes rigid, formats that are popular today. It’s a significant lesson that is often mentioned, but whose importance in this area is overlooked or underappreciated.

Before I forget – there are some helpful instances where letting go of emotions would be beneficial. This isn’t about that. You can also pass them into crystals to be stored safely and/or used as offerings to less than savory spirits that would feed on that.

That’s about it for this post. I’m sure there will be people that get upset or want to pontificate. If you need it for your practice, then use it. I see it as a refinement point and that doesn’t mean you have to agree. But if you can’t do what you do without using a lot of emotion, petitions aside, then I would suggest you don’t have legs to stand on for your speech.

This post is more about reflecting on an individual’s personal magical process/progress than changing the majority Occult view of using emotion in practice. Most magicians just want something that works reasonably well. Good for them. Someone has to help lay the groundwork for the rest that are actively searching to be better than average. I’m doing my part. I hope others will, too.