The first rule you have to learn is that any motherfucker who comes around telling you he knows all and sees all is full of shit. He’s either selling something or he’s into that Guru trip where he lays that shit on thick. “Everything you are doing is WRONG!...But I see a feeble glint of promise in you. Follow me and the world can be yours.” They lay that rap on you and maybe you’re some young dude or chica...and maybe you believe it. What they don’t tell you is that the world is only going to be yours after your guru has bent the world over the coffee table and had his nasty way with it. Or worse, Bent YOUR world over the coffee table and done the nasty all over it, and then wiped his dick on the curtains. Know what I'm saying?
Nobody knows everything there is to know about magick. It is an intuitive art, and like many things in that realm, there’s no way you could impart everything that YOU know about it, much less everything THERE IS TO KNOW.
But there are some hard and fast rules.
Magick is all about the movement of energy. People, even people who don’t consider themselves magickally inclined, do this all the time. The practice of Magick is to learn how to do this consciously and with full volition, instead of doing it, or more often NOT doing it, intuitively.
I’ve been a few places and seen a few things. I’ve seen people energized by Kodo drumming, or electric guitars. I’ve seen Karateka break bricks and focus their esoteric energy into incredible physical acts. I’ve seen people dial up their command voice, or in some cases, their seductive voice and see people respond. Energy moves in a lot of ways.
But even esoteric energy conforms to thermodynamics. and as physics tells us, There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
A lot of what you can learn about magick is about affecting probabilities, certain forms of internal energy movement, and manipulating other people. This is the kind of magick that you generally do with your own store of personal power. You might undergo kundalini awakening rituals, learn chi gong and find ways to strengthen and deepen your Chi reservoir, and it will still NEVER allow you to start hucking around lightning bolts. Calling up 1.21 gigawatts is just not on the menu. You might learn ways to nudge a lightning bolt to strike a target during a lightning storm. But you’d never be able to just blast some dude.
See. All human beings have a store of energy. That store is constantly renewed by the process of living. Pulling enough energy out yourself to cause effects “On the Macro Scale” essentially shortens your life. I have seen people attempt magickal effects that made them dizzy, made them pass out. I even saw one woman hospitalize herself because of something she tried on the fly.
If you’re dizzy, unless the need is dire, STOP. If you start to brown out or see black tadpoles at the corners of your vision. Definitely, STOP.
But just as there isn’t any free lunch, There are ways you can effectively spend “Other People’s Money”
There are places called Spots. A spot is any place where esoteric energy pools. In such a place, one could reach out and grab some energy and use it, instead of using your personal stash. Crossroads, ley lines, particular haunted places. Usually, there is a bunch of energy there for the taking. Some are open and you can feel it in the soles of your feet, and other energy has crystallized into forms. (Grave dust is the most usual example.)
The trade-off with Spots is that other magickally inclined creatures usually know about them or can sense them. As a result, things can jump off if you ain’t careful. Most times, things are chill. Like around the water cooler at work or something like that. You can throw a hand up, say “Hey.” without too much trouble. Maybe even work the grapevine and find out the 411 on things. Other times, Spots can be dangerous to be around or own. But then again on the other hand, if you’re there first and someone comes round acting all ig’nant. Well, you got the juice and they probably don’t.
Another way to get enough bang for your buck is Toys. As I said, Energy moves in a lot of ways. Some things are more sensitive to the movement of energy than others. And there are usually a few people in the magickal community who have an affinity for the exacting work of making Toys. Essentially a Toy is anything that works like a simple machine. Like a pulley or a ramp or a lever. Essentially by crafting an article with an affinity for a particular sort of energy movement, you can leverage greater power at the cost of flexibility.
It’s a bit like taking the power of a thrown punch and distilling it down to the size of a needle-point without losing any of its power. Imagine how it would feel to hit in the head by something like that. Toys create greater effect but their making makes them not very flexible. You can’t just swap affinities around and most who’ve tried have ended up learning the hard way.
By the way. I should mention, in magickal circles, “Learning the Hard Way” usually means getting killed.
That said, Toys can be useful in a lot of ways. Some take energy right from you to work, and others have their own reservoirs of power, which you usually have to fill up over time. Some are even set up to refill themselves anytime you take them around to a Spot.
Another means for making magickal effect go further is through alchemy. Alchemy is a bit like faith and technology wrapped up together and cooked until you got yourself a thermos full. It’s essentially the same sort of work that Toymaking is, but it’s more open ended in terms of use. Herbal and chemical compounds can be enhanced to amplify their natural magickal affinities in a whole bunch of ways. The only downside to all that is that the power in those things usually fades over time. Toys tend to be a lot more solid.
Toymaking is an exacting science. Usually reserved for the more anal retentive practitioners among us. Toymakers usually pride themselves on mastering an encyclopedic corpus of learning that’d break most of us, and I have yet to meet a single one that didn’t look chronically constipated.
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