Spells vs Augmented Living
Happy New Year Strategerati, here’s something for Strategic Sorcerer’s to ponder for the start of 2018: What has a greater impact: Spells or Augmented Living?
Maybe you don’t know what I am getting at. Let me explain.
Spells: An action or a series of actions taken to achieve a specific end. The actual working could be anything from a candle spell to a demonic summoning, as long as its targetting at something measurable and specific. ie: finding a new girlfriend, making 20k in January, getting your neighbor to move out.
Augmented Living: Living a life with regular magical and/or spiritual practices maintained as a background. Offerings, Inner Heat, Devotions, Meditation, etc. This is done for the overall effect on your life rather than for any specific targeted end.
When someone at the beginning of their career in magic tells me that their practice is primarily about them “being magical”, I get skeptical because often this amounts to nothing more than wearing funky jewelry, reading (or just owning) occult books, and arguing on facebook groups.
When someone who has been practicing for decades however tells me that they are costantly spinning spells to hold together their job, their relationship, and their life I get a little saddened because that means that their spells, while perhaps individually effective, have not built something solid – probably because they do not have regular practices that created an augmented life.
I asked this question on the Strategic Sorcery Group and happily most people came to same conclusion that I do: while you can do either without the other, both are amplified and made steadier by each other.
Spellwork just manifests easier when you are making regular offerings – its like the world is eager to pay you back. Spells get more focus and spirit contact becomes clearer when the mind is known through meditation. Inner heat and other energy practices turn the volume up on literally everything, spells included, and of course are probably my #1 piece of advice for those that want to develop psychic senses.
Augmented Living is in turn given something to focus on and do through the specific efforts of spells. Road Opening becomes Wayfinding becomes Conquest of a new plateau in life.
Perhaps the best comment on this discussion was from Sara Mastros of “Witches for Hire” fame. She noted that that “I completely agree, an experienced magician shouldn’t really need spell work for every day stuff, but I also feel like a magician whose life is on cruise control ought probably to be having a lot more fun.”
Another student, Ethan Baker, commented that “Augmented Living” sounds like “brosorcery from a brohacker podcast”, so with that in mind I almost cannot resist embracing my inner Bro and writing more about it 🙂 Maybe now that I have a book on the Elements of Spellcrafting coming out, I should compliment it with a book on this other side of the coin.
What about you? What do you think your mix is between the two? What do you think you need to increase this year? Tell me, tell me, tell me!
