How Does One Become A Extremely Talented Magician?, Magicians Options

If someone wanted to become a extremely talented magician how would he go about it? Is 'talent' in the arts an aft form or can it be achieved through hard work and dedication? I believe my current magikal skill and ability is very limited as I have only done a few servitor magik rituals. I want to be very honest here and say I am extremely critical of magik and if it even exists. I have contemplated dedicating a entire life to this and gaining incredible skills but I just need to know it's real so that I know it is not a life wasted. I feel in myself I have been ignored by every entity that is out there as I have never had a run in with one and feel kind of helpless.
I have a question that goes out to the most respected on this forum in that if you were to start from the beggining where would you start to get the fastest results possible? my interests lie in evoking entities and servitor/egregore magik. Alot of my ideas in the past have been a little crazy but I really want to do this the right way and you can be sure your advice will be followed to the roots. Any tips?

Thank you and happy holidays.

The general traits that I believe a magician must possess and weren't mentioned are:

To be able and silence the mind at will.
To maximize the ability to visualize. Visualizations must be extremely clear, and it must be the only thing within the mind of the magician while performing the ritual.
To be flexible within the ritual (i.e. adapting correct pronouciation, movement, etc).
Generally, to be able to direct and focus the five senses in the steps of the ritual, the area, the incense, the robes and their significance, the result, etc.

And I want to make clear that when I'm talking about visualization, I'm not referring only to the creation of some plain images, but of things that can be perceived and also felt from all the senses.

The general traits that I believe a magician must possess and weren't mentioned are:

To be able and silence the mind at will.
To maximize the ability to visualize. Visualizations must be extremely clear, and it must be the only thing within the mind of the magician while performing the ritual.
To be flexible within the ritual (i.e. adapting correct pronouciation, movement, etc).
Generally, to be able to direct and focus the five senses in the steps of the ritual, the area, the incense, the robes and their significance, the result, etc.

And I want to make clear that when I'm talking about visualization, I'm not referring only to the creation of some plain images, but of things that can be perceived and also felt from all the senses.

After 9 years of magical work (I started with Modern Magick and Initiation Into Hermetics) I'm glad that I have all these points covered (in my personal - and probably biased opinion (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)) , however I'm afraid a moderate mental adepthood isn't enough if one wants to become an extremely talented magician.

One crucial point is to not become swayed by mundane life. If you have been doing the LBRP and MP once a day in a hurry in order to spare more time for playing WOW or whatever; uninstall WOW and start doing LBRP, LBRP, RC, MP and also SIRP (on another time) each day. Include skrying or meditation where you used to have browsing 4chan.

You don't think an excellent martial artist only shadow boxes five mins a day and sits on his ass the rest of the day, do you? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I admit I don't always practice like I preach, but I believe - like others have said in this thread - that the only way to become better is by practicing more.

This post has been edited by Agni: Jan 15 2009, 09:17 PM

Hmm.. Somehow my post doesn't make as much sense as I intended last night. Well here's one more thought; IMHO it's a good idea to aim for practical results early on, i.e. when you are comfortable with Middle Pillar (check out Regardie's How To Make and Use Talismans, there's a torrent of it around), why not use it to charge a talisman..