The Costs Of Magick, Is a ritual and a sacrifice really enough? Options

All magick has a cost. A lot of practitioners can psychologically negotiate around them, so they say - I was certainly of that temperment when I first began exploring magick, I wanted something for nothing. But sometimes we have a hard time knowing what's required of us by whatever force we're invoking, and we aren't sure what to give in exchange. Are sacrifices of material things enough? Incense to 'feed' the spiritual force? Our immediate time and attention to give moments of our own life over to magickal purpose? There may be small costs to gain immediate gratification of our intentions, but is that all it really costs?

I've been in the mood to ask myself these questions, lately, and as my professed paradigm dictates, I began to observe.

For context, here's my recent journey through life in a nutshell.

When I left home, I moved in with a friend and her family, and they took care of me. Then I moved in with a partner who was a few years older than me, and he took care of me. Then we moved back to my hometown, moved in with my friend, and by and large, they paid all the bills. Then my friend and i moved back into our respective homes, and then eventually I moved out of my home and into hers to live with their family again.

It began to be obvious that I was not doing a good job of learning how to support myself, and that I had nothing to rely on but these other people. That was the first instance in which I used magick which was singularly for self-growth, and no immediate gratification.

First of all, my journey since that moment, has been more magickal, more filled with signs and synchronicities, more interesting experiences in consciousness and psychological developement, than any period in my life. Now, before this period I was already tapping the Source - connecting to the divine intelligence - to about half the degree that I do now, and much of my essential paradigm remains the same. Parts have been expanded upon, and more thoroughly digested, so that I know now much more than my younger self did. I had achieved lots of magickal successes by that point, but in quality they lacked the 'force' that my successes have now. They're more impactful now.

Then, the cost of magick seemed to be simply the way it would impact your life, and could be negotiated simply by dealing intelligently with that effect, and trying to predict ahead of time the areas that it could affect you, and how to prepare in advance. Now I see it the same way, but I've started to think that negotiating it like that, viewing it as how to avoid the cost, has actually cheated me out of a lot of growth in the past.

I did magick to cut myself off from the negative influences in my life, so that I could begin fullfilling my potential as quickly as possible. Given my situation it was a success, I was 'freed' from my home, which was stifling me bit by bit - and in retrospect I would have grown far more if I had immediately gotten serious about life, and really done my best to be independant; instead I coasted on the new found freedom until I hit a point where I would have to get serious, but instead I negotiated myself into a position where i could be free in one sense, and not have to deal with the responsibility. Now, looking back at what choices I made and why, I realize that I had actually lost the most important part of that freedom by avoiding the initial cost - my immature attitude about life.

I did magick for love. It seemed to be the appropriate next step, and my magick for freedom had worked so well. And I had love, coming in from boys everywhere. Again, I was unwilling to accept the way love would impact my life, so I negotiated by manipulating the people that fell in love with me to being more like entertainment than relationships. Eventually I forgot to learn the lesson that love is supposed to teach, and am still working on getting it back, the hard way.

I did magick for power, and I was given respect by my peers, adoration by my teachers, and a voice that made everyone sure I was right. When the impact happened, I negotiated my way around the responsibility of that identity in life, using that same gift to alleivate that responsibility for the things I said or did. But eventually, my manipulation became lying, and eventually that collapsed, and I no longer had those gifts.

And I had very little powerful magick after that. At this point is when I began to explore deeply the understanding of consciousness that I have now - While I probably wasn't consciously aware of it then, I had recieved a harsh punishment for abusing the gifts I demanded, and giving nothing in return. That punishment, however, redirected my interests inward rather than outward, and I became more diligent with my analysis of myself, no longer overly concerned with expressing myself, so much as learning what it was I was expressing. So my innate energy for exploration was forcefully redirected towards personal growth. I could have maybe used it for some other sort of exploration, drugs, crime, etc... but I was also in a position where those things weren't within easy reach, and so far I hadn't developed the ability to 'reach' for anything in life - I had skipped those lessons that were the cost of my magick.

And when i reached the limit of that growth, or what seemed to be in any case, when the world around me had become stagnant, and i was quickly stagnating with it, that is when I did magick for no other reason than to know what I needed to do to grow out of it, away from it.

And what I got, was a crash course in the same lessons I avoided before, but instead of getting the gains, I was just paying off my debt. I got freedom, in a position where not taking it seriously would get me homeless. I got Love, from someone who I owed a debt to, and who I lived with, and who I didn't really know enough to be sure that he would never let me live on the street. he made me carry my weight, so I was given a 'guide' through my task, in effect, and he gave me the fear that I needed to straighten up, since I didn't know for sure he would just leave me behind if I was a burden. In other words this love wasn't under my control. Finally, I was exposed to a culture of people who are inherently distrustful. So, I had to learn how to fulfill a good ethical code when it came to dealing with people, and never abuse the respect I work to gain.

I had to do the work as it was put in front of me to fulfill those tasks, and now, two years after coming to new york, I am on the bring of really and truly being on my own, independant, for the first time ever. And, it occurred to me that there is a bit of fear there, during meditation today. The fear of not being prepared enough, not having learned my lessons well enough, to exercise the gifts effectively in life, yet. And, following this observation was the thought that I should use that fear to do well. it is worth noting, I think, that the meditation was an excercise for recalling the various seals in the Necronomicon, the most recent of which had been Asarualim, following the construction of the composite seal on the cover of the necromonicon, the Arra/Agga/bandar glyph. As soon as that thought crossed my mind, of using my fear, a counterthought intervened comparing the use of fear as the use of the 'darkside' which is a relative term for an aspect of my paradigm on how we derive motivation in life, from a magickal perspective. That if I am to truly give my intentions over to the 'light' or the opposing archetype to the 'dark' in whatever form, then it seems i should derive motivation from the deliberate want to do well. And then all this thought of the costs of magick occured, and I followed it through my life for a time, being shown the places in which costs were incurred, and not paid, and the places where the gifts had been taken away and how.

Now, by now i've learned those lessons, at least as much as i can learn them where i am - the only way up, is up. So, I think I was finally able to see and understand more thoroughly how magick has affected my life, and how the laws have manifested themselves. It occurred to me to post it here because when I was an initiate cruising the 'net to find out all I could about the things i couldn't buy books on at my local bookstore. I wanted experiences, and effective magick, and wanted to see opinions and examples that weren't written down anywhere. And in all that, all the talk of costs was vague, and there were theories on how to avoid costs, theories about how karma doesn't exist, and they were so specific. it didn't occur to me then that wanting something for nothing is selfish. There is no balance. It's okay to be selfish, I think, in your magickal desires, certainly the desire to grow is selfish to some point of views, but if it is balanced with surrender and selflessness, work for the sake of work, doing well for the sake of doing well, balances that selfishness out.

This was all stuff no one taught me when I was a wee magician.

And it's worth mentioning, of course, that all of this stuff is going to happen in everyone's life. We're all offered the oppurtunity to learn lessons in life, it's why we're here, to understand. Spirituality is about exploring those lessons as they come, and using them to grow - magick is about Asking for those lessons, even if you don't know that's what you're asking for (because let's face it, your higher consciousness doesn't want material things...) and the cost of getting them is understanding what they teach and shouldering that responsibility wisely.

it's repeated everywhere, over and over again, that magick should be used responsibly, that you have to live the magick you work, that you get bad karma for bad magick, it's been said in a million different ways, but when it's explained, for some reason it's usually is something incredibly vague, and there is rarely talk of what happens when you do get around the cost.

hope someone gets something out of this post, sometime.

peace
B

Excellent example of the cost of cutting corners. Too many practioners, especially in my generation, use magick for convience, and have the singular goal of more power, status and riches. It can be a real culture shock to some of us older souls that believe that the purpose of magick is wisdom and knowledge, that with this comes power, and that power demands great responsibility. The truley wise understand that there is no bad luck, only opportunity. Opportunity for growth, change, re-birth. We openly embrace challange, and hold disdain for those that take the "easy" way out.

For me, the greatest cost of magick has been (and continues to be) an ever increasing disastifaction with the mudane, mortal existance. Work, social events (with non-magi) even certain aspects of family life seem blase in comparison to the magick. I catch myself sitting often times at my desk, staring into the astral, when I am interrupted by a client's phone call. An interruption that is aggrevating, but necessary to financial survival. Seems the more I climb the ladder of light, the more annoying everyday life becomes. The challenge for me is to view the sheep, excuse me, people, with compassion, and love them for their ignorance and shortcomings, rather than treat them as an ant farm merely here for my entertainment...

This post has been edited by Makavelli: Aug 9 2006, 09:22 AM

Excellent example of the cost of cutting corners. Too many practioners, especially in my generation, use magick for convience, and have the singular goal of more power, status and riches. It can be a real culture shock to some of us older souls that believe that the purpose of magick is wisdom and knowledge, that with this comes power, and that power demands great responsibility. The truley wise understand that there is no bad luck, only opportunity. Opportunity for growth, change, re-birth. We openly embrace challange, and hold disdain for those that take the "easy" way out.

For me, the greatest cost of magick has been (and continues to be) an ever increasing disastifaction with the mudane, mortal existance. Work, social events (with non-magi) even certain aspects of family life seem blase in comparison to the magick. I catch myself sitting often times at my desk, staring into the astral, when I am interrupted by a client's phone call. An interruption that is aggrevating, but necessary to financial survival. Seems the more I climb the ladder of light, the more annoying everyday life becomes. The challenge for me is to view the sheep, excuse me, people, with compassion, and love them for their ignorance and shortcomings, rather than treat them as an ant farm merely here for my entertainment...

Be very careful with that attitude, because it is very easy for that to escalate into outright hubris.

People exist for many different reasons. We have purposes to fulfull - a part of the system to perpetuate, if you will. I can understand, however, and often feel the same way. I think it is the tightness of these common dimensions - consciousness expands, new dimensions are added to our perceptions, and the few that we've been conscious of seem ordinary and normal.

However, I think that part of the effectiveness of a magickal lifestyle - that is, making that lifestyle of benefit to the macrocosmic system - is empathizing with those "sheep", and understanding how truly amazing they see life individually, even without the mystical dimension to their life. They are built to be satisfied with "less" because that is what they are here for, to tend to a different part of the system than we do.

Also, magicians tend to believe that we're the only ones looking into the higher dimensions and expanding our consciousness. that's not true. There are dimensions you and I will never see, because they aren't part of what we're here for. They are irrelevant to our purpose, but relavent to the purpose of others. I am constantly amazed by seemingly mundane people who understand and percieve the subtle dimensions of their own realm of daily life, even though they aren't magicians, sages, or particularly thoughtful people in general.

Bones, muslces, sinew, nerves, brain tissue... all of it and more is necessary to build a functioning lifeform, and all of those systems must function to the best of their abilities, and within the parameters of their functions. It is a manifestation of the principle of order. Our inherent inability to focus on and fullfill that purpose is a manifestation of the princple of chaos. When we surrender to Order, accept the system as it is, and accept the unequivocal truth of equanimity between one man and another, no matter his status or experience - then an aspect of the world around us is opened up so that we can see the inner workings of human kind.

You or I, or anyone else on this forum, are no better than any other person who has never even thought about magick or knows what a pentacle is. He is fulfilling his purpose, we are fulfilling our own.

peace