Are You Ever Going To Write About Magic Again?

So, would it be appropriate at this juncture to say, “Amen”? This is where I was when I signed up for Strategic Sorcery, and slowly I am getting where I want to be with a far more simple, dare I say, strategic use of what I already know.
Have I said thank you lately?
Thank you Jason!

I not only find your approach helpful to my sorcery, but to more mundane matters as well. To be honest, I am not sure the two can really be separated. Your writings have shown me how to thonk about one informing the other and I have been practicing for over thirty years.

This is funny timing, as this is my first time on the blog, and I came to make the opposite request – “more strategy, less magic”.

I’ve just read your Strategic Sorcery book. I was about to write a review on Amazon, but I’ve heard you in interviews and you sound pretty down to earth and approachable, and active on your blog. May as well go directly to you with this and maybe open up a conversation.

The book has some gems in it that I will definitely use. However, there is less big picture structure than I was hoping for. It starts out promisingly, with a summary of three levels of operation; and the emphasis on using both magical and mundane tactics in parallel.

But then it seems to just be a laundry list of magical techniques. The techniques are good ones, and you make a few references to the three levels, or the mundane/magical dichotomy. But I didn’t come away from it with any feeling that there was an overarching strategy that could pin it all together as a process.

I’m coming from a heavily codified Kabbalistic background – the four worlds, climbing the tree etc. What I thought you’d include was something along the lines of:

1) Determine your goal(s) (we’ll go with money for this example)
2) Diagnose the problem – past experiences; limiting beliefs and attitudes in NLP terms; relevant parts of natal chart (eg Mercury; Jupiter; 2nd house; 4th house; 6th house).
3) Break it down into clusters of related sub-projects (maybe Chiron is in 2nd house; AND Pisces is in midheaven – different issues that would both contribute. Do these correspond to limiting beliefs around security, or ambition?).
4) For each of the above, work through the levels (top down OR bottom up – I’d be interested to know your thoughts on which to go with and when) to cover correspondences at different levels of subtlety. Eg you might choose the Chiron in 2nd house cluster. Then start with the physical body and do some throat exercises – voice training, massage the lymph nodes, lion’s breath yoga etc. Then progress to the energy body and work on the throat chakra; do some reiki; meditate on the astrological stuff. Then move onto tarot or hebrew meditation.

I hope I’m making sense. Something substantially structured into stages.

Is this something covered in more detail in your course or on the blog? I thought the book was a bit light on with this stuff, for what I was expecting. Definitely better than most books – which are either way to beginner; or just a big list of spells or correspondences.

I’m not trying to stomp on the whole project, just giving some feedback. I like your work – you know what you’re doing.

I’m about to start reading through all your blog entries too – looking forward to it 🙂

Thanks.

The reason I read your blog is because of the process, and strategy, and habit change. Alone, it’s good stuff. Coupled with magic it’s seriously powerful.

People have a hard time realizing that living your life and making headway toward desires and goals is magick. Rituals, incense, robes, and planets are all supplementary, not critical. It’s almost a cognitive dissonance, in the same way, most people have a hard time realizing that humans are just as much of a force of nature on this planet as anything else. Just take a look at any self-help book, let’s use Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill for example. If one changed the lingo and wording it would be damn near a book about magick. I think Strategic Sorcery is great at helping erase the line between everyday life and magick.

I feel that you write about magic constantly, whether you prescribe words of power to be said while waving a wand, or not. So rarely is it about the ‘magical working’, and more about the (occasionally) improbable synchronicity which follows the working.

But magic, more often than not, is about opening space and time for action and direction. You’re opening doors, you’re casting road-opener spells (another great Gordon riff on a theme I saw you do first), but the work of walking through the door (or knocking it down) is on the person with the physical body, not the spirit that can manage spooky action at a distance.

So keep writing about magic. Eventually the apprentices will catch up.

Honestly, when it comes to work that is intended to effect material circumstances, I believe the magickal working is 10% of the equation and the remaining 90% DOES involve strategy and habit change. It’s easy to underestimate how prepared one is to take on such change, in accordance to how big and how rapid the change is. Hence the examples of lotto winners blowing their cash in couple of years or less- they never made efforts to rebuild their schema, mannerisms, network, or knowledge to handle such larger sums of money. I agree with Hermetic axioms encouraging inner alchemy so that different, tangible external phenomena can take root and have staying power (instead of say, causing shock on one hand, or on the other, seeming not to manifest at all because the subject is not even equipped to perceive an opportunity let alone take advantage of it). Thus IMHO, any additional information, strategies, or recommendations, in addition to the rites, is invaluable, and frankly part of the craft. Strategic Sorcery definitely lives up to its name.

[…] So I understood when I read this blog post by Jason Miller. […]

[…] in with Gordon and Jason about the recent rash of complaints we’ve all gotten about the various directions our blogs […]

“From Chaos, to Hoodoo, to Sabattic Craft, to Grimoires, people move from one thing to the next hoping for the magic that will finally do what they want, when the real issue is application.”

Well put. I think this kind of attitude is largely the product of modern consumer culture. Rather than mastering anything, we alway want to look for the next thing we can consume. We want to order our answers pre-packaged from Amazon rather than truly learn a craft.

Actually I don’t read the blog much for any particular topic. The reason I read it is that it represents to me a range of what a for real, actually qualified, with all of the bells, whistles, and cermonies Lama can be up to outside of what most people think of when they think of “things that Lamas do”.

And as someone who spends most of his time with deeply traditional Lamas and “technically lay people but actually more like monks” it is very interesting when you talk about magic, business, and the like.

By the way, do you still do phone consultation? I’d like to book a half hour to ask you about Buddhist stuff at some point.

I agree 100%. One thing that I would like to please request is more posts on when your or one of your student’s magic did not manifest as expected, in other words in a less than ideal way?

My reason for asking is that it’s a lot less painful to learn from someone else experiences. Whilst magic tech, application of said tech, and successes are interesting – I think that we learn the most from failures and as our brains run on stories (quote from Cat Vincent lecture) – they are the easiest to remember. Thanks! ST.

I have read with much interest your books. Although I have not yet “go” from speculation to the operation. According to your writings, during the magical processes some spirits from different levels are invoked , some of them may be “unfriendly”. What can I do to protect me from some kind of attack?

Thanks!!!

I think a really good question is: when are you ever going to teach us new magick tricks?

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I have been reading out some of your articles and i ought to say nice stuff. I will definitely bookmark your blog.

Thanks for the post, can you make it so I get an email every time you write a new article?

It laborious to seek out knowledgeable folks on this matter, but you sound like you already know what that you are talking about! Thanks