Hello 👋 to the curious and to fellow seekers! ☺ This is my first post here on this my new blog. I'm not going to get very serious and I doubt at the moment I will be posting spells online: at least, not mine! 😊
However, for many years I have been interested in herbalism; and a little later, (once I gained courage as a neo-pagan!) in magic, magick, Real Magic(k)... And whatever we of the Craft and fellow non-muggles call it! 😊
I don't really mind what kind of magic it is btw (as long as it's not TOO Left-hand-Path!) 😏 But Wiccan magic, Ritual magick, US hoodoo magic (& their other very interesting traditions including of course the Germanic ones) ..
Everything, including the easy, safe (we hope! 😉) "beginner" magic spells published in certain women's mass-market monthly magazines in UK such as Take a Break Fate and Fortune (my current favourite) or Spirit and Destiny... don't know if they have those or mags like them in the US; I've never asked... Perhaps someone can tell me. You probably have Spirit and Destiny though.
Yes they're aIl interesting/fascinating to me! I find it quite difficult or undesirable to make hard-and-fast distinctions between all the different "traditions"; to me they all seem to mix and meld, all in some kind of vast intercultural vat of borrowing and interchange and cultural fusion!
Another thing I've long thought is that magick has a lot in common with cookery. (Mind you I think science has much in common with cookery too.. when they can get the replicating the recipe right that is!) 😄
You can have fusion cooking; therefore I reckon you can have fusion magick, too. Probably that is what we have today in Eclectic Wicca; Wicca itself being a recreated/new-created religion and magical tradition.
You have to take your inspirations where you can find them! Pagan, Neo-Platonist or Renaissance grimoire.
Is anybody chancing across this going to ask me "how it works" or how I think it does?
Well; with a lot of the simple spells that you find online or in the aforementioned specialist women's magazines, I believe quite honestly that the main point of most of those is to have a psychological effect on the spell-caster, and to charge them up psychologically; give them confidence, rather like a turbocharged positive thinking!
But I won't say that that is the *only* effect they have! (I rather admire Take a Break F&F's resident witch and wouldn't want to offend her! 😉)
Another important factor in the working of Real Magic is as a matter of fact (a key one I believe) smell and scent; hence the number of magickal oils and incenses you can buy. Lots of those will hopefully be covered/linked to on this blog.
Like herbalism, this would appear to have a scientific basis (albeit one under-researched as yet): smell affects the deepest and oldest structures in the brain.
The other main way magick is supposed to work is through having (usually) very slight but measurable - to the witch! mage, adept or whatever - effects on reality; presumably at the quantum level.
The cosmos is not "dead" or purely mechanical; magic-workers and alchemists have known that for millennia. The "clockwork universe" model of reality only became popular during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Therefore: human will should be able to influence the living universe at the quantum level. As we call the sub-atomically small these days!
The TaB witch put it very well, to my mind, recently. See, probability has a big part to play, here, too! (That's maffs. Nothing I'm an expert on but I did get an "A" grade at "O" level! 😄)
She said spells worked to increase probability. The trouble BEING, as I could see, that lots of things desirable - as well as undesirable - to the human individual are in fact very IMprobable! 😏
As the TaB witch put it: Say you want to win the lottery. So you do a luck spell. Even if you're quite good at casting spells, you may have doubled your winning chances; maybe even trebled them! *But* the chances of winning the lottery jackpot is infinitesimal as it is; and all the prizes have longer odds than one in two or three. *So*, you may well have doubled/trebled your winning chances by your working: but you'll still be VERY unlikely to win a major prize!
(Unless the stars too are really with you, I personally am tempted to add!)
After *all*, there *are* weird coincidences happening in the world around us! Like the three members of I believe it was a Swedish family, who all won jackpots in their national lottery; not quite in successive years, but according to some strange cosmic formula!
It almost never happens; but it does! ☺
And a few years ago, in a pub raffle, at the culmination of a nice night out with a female friend, I won about four prizes; and I'd only bought five tickets for a pound or something! (The prizes were in kind but they were useful groceries: meat, nice cheeses.)
And no: since I had no control over the counterfoils that went into the draw, I couldn't have made them stick together! Or any other cynical "explanation".
(As this was in my - largely - pre-magical days, I had made no spell; and the only way I could explain it to myself was to assume it was a sign from my deceased mother, who I believe was pleased I was socializing (a sadly rare occurence) and cementing my friendships. Also it was on May Day; which is NOT my birthday, but which I have always felt was propitious.)
Anyway: the TaB witch was of the opinion that spell working was not much point to try to win the lottery; that it would be better directed to improving chances in a game of skill; or better yet, to getting a job! 😄
And if you want any further idea of how magic works; or the World as Will and Idea or something... Then you'll have to read more of the works of either, or both,
Arthur Schopenhauer and Aleister Crowley! I've already waxed longer and heavier on this first post than I originally intended! 😏
Here's one of my favourite magical supplies websites, that I've admired for years and that has loads of fascinating articles on it: The Lucky Mojo Curio Company
(A lot less "touristy" than the name may sound, I promise you! Very interesting site. 👍)
