Judging Your Results Against Others

One of the great things about Strategic Sorcery is that we have a very large (over 400 people) and active community that, for the most part, conducts itself with composure and compassion and keeps its focus squarely on the work at hand.

It is can be an awesome and inspiring thing to read about peoples success and see details of how they operate. On the other hand it can be disappointing to feel that you are not getting results that are as fast or strong as other people are reporting. I have had people worry that their stuff is not working because others are posting field reports of phantasmagoric visions, strange synchronicities, and practical results granted in just a couple days or even a couple hours.

It is great not to have to weigh your results in a vacuum, but its just as important not to define yourself too much in the context of other peoples results. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

First and foremost some people are just wired for visions. They close their eyes and its like watching a damn movie. They could do any ritual at all and have some kind of visionary experience. I know, because I am one of these people. This is not necessary for success in sorcery though, and people should not feel it necessary to have these kinds of visions.There are many gifts of the spirit. In fact, in some ways being pre-disposed towards seeing can be a difficulty that needs to be overcome. This is true in strategic sorcery in particular.
Visions, energetic response, and even paranormal phenomena at the time of ritual DO NOT equal result. I have been to rituals where everyone walked away buzzing with energy and stories of visions and exploding light bulbs, yet no real lasting result for any of the participants. I have also been to rituals where there was not an excess of experience at the time, but manifested the requested results in a big way. There is very little correlation between the two.
A few people reported some amazing results just hours after performing the recent Jupiter rite, and some others results that manifested in just days. This should NOT suggest that people who did not get such results failed. It has only been 8 days! Things can take 3 weeks to manifest simple results, and long term strategic work happens over months. One shot spells are great, but Strategic Sorcery is more Chess then Checkers.
Sometimes a magical ritual does not work for you, even when it works for others. There are a lot of possible reasons for this, but in general magic does not always manifest in ways that we expect or want. Strategic Sorcery method helps mitigate this risk and keep things on target, but it does not make it 100% on target. It is just as important to post and workshop poor or completely opposite results as it is to examine failures.

Whether you are in my course group, a coven, an order, or another kind of community take advantage of that by comparing notes and examining each others successes and failures, but do not judge yourself solely in relation to others. It is not a competition.

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
– Ernest Hemingway

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 5 comments

Aidan Wachter

Great post.

This is something I have been talking with people about forever. When I see things, it’s a huge deal, and very rare. I get tons of information in other ways.

Aidan

Stone Dog

“Strategic Sorcery is more Chess then Checkers.”

Right on. Though this is one of the main reasons why I – as many others, I’m sure – was driven to SS in the first place, it’s useful to be reminded from time to time, particularly when results are not happening despite my efforts both mundane and magical.

S. A. Smith

The examination of poor or opposite effects of ritual really is a wise idea to be able to get results from future rituals.

If you think of rituals as like high performance cars this becomes clear. When you are testing a car and it doesn’t do what you want there are steps you take to see what went wrong. You take apart the engine, you factor in the weather, you give the driver a full physical, and so forth.

In a ritual context this means that there are some things that I think are really important to do(in no particular order).

1. Taping the ritual is ideal. This allows you to see the ritual happen to see what you didn’t do well.
2. Take detailed notes of every aspect of the pre and post ritual. Did you make offerings? To whom? Do you have a pre-existing relationship with any spirits that could have been upset with what you were doing?
3. Make this information available to other practitioners so that they can assist in the post-mortem.
4. Do a full self evaluation right before and after the ritual. Did you have some rogue memes that were messing with the results? Were you horribly sick and therefore couldn’t say the words right?
5. Review the goal in relation to the overall external environment.

Also, it might be a good idea to compare these factors with rituals that DID work really well and see what differences there were.

Cecilia

I haven’t had measurable results, but I haven’t had bad things happen, either. I think the work I do is very deep and underground. The physical manifestations I have come in increased psychic activity, “coincidences,” and just plain good luck. I measure my success in Strategic Sorcery through how much I’m learning. My friends say they notice a difference in me. So I know things are happening for me. I just can’t measure them.

cybermage

Yeah I agree its a bad idea, everyone has talents , some practice more then others. People’s astrology charts effect there abilities, such as there saturn. Besides its to hard to tell if everyone is telling the truth all the time especially online. As soon as people talk about this stuff ego’s flare up and people ante up and before you know it- my ritual results where in 1 hour , – oh yeah mine was in half and hour- oh yeah mine was 5 mins – oh yeah mine was 5 seconds

Judging Your Results Against Others

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