How To Troubleshoot Your Spells - Mastering Magic

 I occasionally get emails and comments from people often beginners in the Craft who are frustrated because they don't seem to get the results that they want from their magic. Sometimes what happens is people need help to get their lives working in a way that is better than what they're experiencing.

So they'll turn to things like magic because they want some help, and it's a perfectly understandable thing to do. Turning to a technique that promises to give you some sort of control or power over the events in your life, which is what magic is. Magic is using unseen forces. In order to create change, not only in consciousness, but also in circumstance, in accordance to our will.

When a novice comes to magic, they are unclear as to the workings of magic. It's common to believe if I do certain things, I should have certain results. If I use this kind of water powder. Incense say these words, recite the psalm, I should get what I want. It should happen, maybe not in a puff of smoke.

Most people understand that it's probably not a puff of smoke, but I did these things that I read on some blog or saw on Facebook or on TikTok. Where's my stuff? It's important to understand the difference between Hollywood fiction, many YouTubers, podcasters, and talkers, how magic works versus the ancient Magi.

And what we practice, what we teach in the path we walk, the ancient magi are depicted in the Bible because they were at that time a class of priesthood that were Zoroastrian in nature. That was just one snapshot of a magical society, but the word magic does come from that priestly class. The Magi is where we get the word magic, but the Magi are not limited to that.

It's not that the Persian Magi had the one and only claim to the so-called real magic. It's just they were the famous ones of the time. I. The Magi are a broader concept, magical practitioners from all cultures throughout all time. There are many differences in practice, but there are some commonalities.

One of the commonalities is that we learn how to work magic within our current magical sphere of influence, and I think what happens with a lot of new practitioners. Is they've never been exposed to the concept of a magical sphere of influence. They don't know that there are limits to their powers, and many of them haven't even built power.

They haven't done any kind of training, and so they don't know. Nobody's taught them. All they hear is all this stuff out there on the blogospheres, on the web, or in books. Many practitioners of magic are interested in some of the fantasy that they have been brought up with, either through books, television, movies, et cetera.

They hope magic works the way it does in fiction as well. So they all perpetuate this misinformation about what magic is. Now, magic is very powerful, and it does give us the ability to have power over our circumstances, but it's usually a lot more pragmatic than what people want it to be. Working within one's magical sphere of influence is the bottom line to success in magic, and you have to be able to define what that magical sphere of influence is before you can press against it.

And the idea isn't to stay stuck in your current sphere of influence. It's to expand it. It's to expand that sphere of influence so that you do have more power over more and more aspects of your life. You have to start with where you are if you are one of those people complaining. I do all of this stuff and nothing ever works for me.

Nothing ever works for me. It usually tells me you're trying to work magic inefficiently because you don't know what you're doing. It's not really about the incense you're burning. It's not really about the words that you're chanting. There's more to it than that. You need training to get your powers focused.

It's either that, or a combination of that and trying to work outside of your sphere of influence too quickly. Trying to expand beyond what you believe is possible. That's what your sphere of influence is, what you have faith in. We have four sides to the witches pyramid. Faith, imagination will and secrecy.

Faith is fragile at first and needs to be built gently over time. If you don't have faith that you can get that money that you're seeking or that job that you're seeking or that car, or whatever it is that you're casting your spell for, it's likely that you're not going to get what you want and then saying, this stuff doesn't work.

Understanding why it didn't work, rather than saying, this stuff doesn't work is so empowering because then you can troubleshoot it. Oh, I see. I was trying to go beyond my sphere of influence too quickly. How do I deal with that? Maybe break my goal down into something that is within what I have faith that I can do:

My sphere of influence. Then you learn how to ride that sphere of influence. You're just pressing up against the edge of it and gently expanding it over time. Never so fast that it becomes scary or everything topples for you, and you start having failure after failure. You want to build success upon success, and you're not staying so far inside your sphere of influence that, why bother with magic?

You wanna be just right. On the edge of your sphere of influence where you need magic because it's beyond what you've been able to accomplish before. But you do see that it's possible. You do see that it's possible, and the more success you have in your spell casting, the faster that sphere of influence expands.

You build up a success momentum, and that perpetuates itself and you become pretty powerful, pretty vast. The secrecy part of it is so important because as soon as you start saying, look what I did, look what I did, look what I did, it starts to poke holes in your sphere of influence because then you're putting yourself on a pedestal where you have to prove yourself again.

You have to prove yourself to all of these people that you just said, look what I can do, and now you have to repeat it and everybody's looking at you. So that's why a lot of times people that are very successful at their magic don't talk about what they did much. So you don't hear about the successes as frequently as might be helpful for you.

In other kinds of studies, you get testimonial after testimonial and that helps you get excited about it. Whereas practitioners of magic that are pretty well trained, they don't give a lot of testimonials about their spells. They usually keep them private. So if you're looking for genuine, magical practitioners to pour out a plethora of testimonials, you're probably not going to find it.

And the ones that do talk a lot start to see their successes dry up. That's a big part of why beginners have trouble. They're trying for magic hat isn't possible yet. It will be possible, but you have to build it up like any other skill. Over time. Don't sit down at your first piano lesson and say, I love that Chopin Nocturn

Let's work on that. No, you're not going to be able to play that. You don't have the skillset. Let's start with a major scale and build things up over time. Magic is another art form whose medium is consciousness. Learning how to train our minds so that we can have within our consciousness that which we desire.

Then what we understand is through the laws of correspondence, cause and effect, and mentalism (all of the hermetic laws), when we change something in our consciousness, physical reality changes automatically. That's the only way you can get the desired result. Even if you get the desired result and you don't change your perception of it, you're going to turn it into something you don't want or you're going to get rid of it, you're going to reject it.

You can see this when. People that don't have the consciousness built for the amount of opulence that a lottery win requires to maintain, they do everything in their power to get rid of all that money. It happens again and again. People say, "if only I could win the lottery, then I would be happy." Well, the ones that do usually aren't happy and they often end up more in debt than when they started.

It's about changing your consciousness in a specific manner. That's what magic is. If you can get the consciousness handled, the physical manifestations, take care of themselves, that's not to say that you disregard the physical universe and don't take care of business. Of course you do, but you're not moving into the world of form to create the change.

You're moving into consciousness to create the change, and then as the change starts to manifest, you do what you need to do in order to maintain that. In the physical world, when you get these manifestations, if you're really working well, it seems so natural. I. It doesn't call attention unto itself too much.

Very rarely do my manifestations from my spells cause people to go, and if it does do that, if people go, I'm really quick to divert the conversation away from that and talk about something else really fast. I don't want people talking about how amazing I am. I don't want people talking about, "wow, look what he can do!"

I don't want that kind of attention because I know that's poison to my magic. So I'm very quick to divert attention away from the exciting manifestations that are happening. Always downplaying the results. So we've got that sphere of influence (faith) and we've got the secrecy. Those are usually the two biggest problems with beginners and why they're not

achieving the results they desire. The other problems are the other two points on that pyramid. Usually they don't know how to use their imagination properly. They don't know how to have focused imagination. And that's a skill you develop, how to use your imagination in a disciplined manner. It's a focused intent that creates results.

And the other part of it too, that is missing or undeveloped is the power of will: willpower; and people have a misunderstanding of what willpower is. They think willpower is a lot of tension and you're just nose to the grindstone taking the bull by the horns. That's not a magical will. That's the opposite of magical will. In magic

you do not want to take the bull by the horns. We are not wanting to fight in order to get what we want. We want be relaxed and focused intention where our will has developed to the point where we just know that when we say something's going to happen, it's going to happen. "It's so, because I said it's so." It's willpower that's relaxed.

There are no lines on the forehead and veins bulging. It's a relaxed focusing where the aperture of your focus gets smaller and more narrow and more narrow, and there's that certainty. There's no fighting, no tension, nothing but certainty. How do you develop that? Slowly over time, like building biceps or building skill in music, or building skill in dance,

practicing again and again. There's always something in your life that needs improvement, so instead of trying to go for those big giant wins right away, start going for the little things that are just a problem for you. "I'd love to be able to have some new clothes for work." That's probably within your sphere of influence.

Maybe just do a spell for one new outfit. See how that goes. Perhaps you're trying to buy a new home, but you don't believe you can afford that, or you don't believe that that's within your abilities, or you haven't had any practice manifesting things before. So you can see how manifesting an outfit might be a bit easier than a new house.

Not that you can't manifest the new house, but let's start with building your skill where it's something's feasible for you. Something that might be a bit of a stretch, but it's not gonna strain your magical will. If you start feeling tense and like you really have to will something into being, you're probably trying to go too far too soon, so let's pull it back in and use whatever it is in your life that you want to change or create as

ways to practice, rather than just magical exercises. Use spell work as your practice. You need that desire to fuel your magic. So you wanna work within your sphere of influence, but you also wanna work for things that you really want, not things you think you ought to have, but what you really, really want.

Because if you don't really want it, you're not going to get the juice flowing for the magic. Magic's main catalyst is desire. Certain desires are put there by the universe for you to fulfill them. Part of magic is learning what do I want? Not what should I have, but what do I really want? Go for those things.

If none of your spells ever work. It's very possible that you're trying too much too soon, or you don't know how to do the basics, the fundamentals, faith, imagination will and secrecy within a context of desire. That pyramid of power is also helpful to troubleshoot when things don't work out. Where on this pyramid am I finding weakness?

And you have to be very honest with yourself. I've noticed with new practitioners, usually it's the faith section that's wanting the most. That's why it's a good thing to not try for things that are so far out of your sphere of influence because you want to build that faith. If you keep having failure after failure, you're not building faith, you are destroying your faith.

So, pulling it back and doing smaller, what I used to call micro magic, I have an old. Vintage lecture called "Micro Magic" you might wanna listen to. I have another one called "The Power of Something." Just a little bit toward your goal, a little spell toward your goal if you have success in casting a spell for a new blouse,

yay! That is gonna build up momentum. But if you keep having failure trying to do the spell for the new house, that's not gonna help you do anything. Of course you're gonna get the house, of course you're gonna get whatever you want, but let's focus on something else that you really want that's more obtainable.

Let's start with where you are. It does take some discipline and some work. Are you talking about it? Are you blabbing about it? I'm not saying talking about it, meaning asking for help. That's different. If you're asking a teacher or a colleague for help in your spell or help in your magic, that's not blasting a hole in your secrecy, but people that talk about their goals aren't usually achieving their goals.

People that talk about their spells aren't usually manifesting their spells. Don't even talk about it. When it manifests, the results will be self-evident. You wanna downplay that. You don't want the attention on you as manifester, 'cause it gives you stage fright. It puts you in a position where you have to perform

then. You don't wanna be in a position where you have to perform. Some people have a hard time expressing their will because this world isn't set up in such a way where we are given permission to have will. In fact, sometimes we are taught not to have will. It can be a challenge if you can have that willpower.

Connected to your desires, that imagination connected to your desires. If you can have that faith that you can have your desires, if you can keep those things sacred and close to your heart and not dissipate the thought forms by talking about them, then your success is inevitable, especially if you're working within your sphere of influence.

Albeit very frequently pushing up right against it because that's how you expand that sphere. If you're not having success, stop working magic for the time being until you can figure that out, because you don't want to keep having failures. You want to have magical successes. That does not mean that you will never have a failure.

Of course you will. You want the failures, also, ultimately, once you have the right frame of mind, because those are learning experiences. When something doesn't work, it doesn't shatter your faith anymore. You say, "oh, that's weird, wonder why that didn't work. Oh, I see what it is!" And then you can fix it.

When something doesn't work, it's like, "what? It should have worked, that doesn't make sense!" When something doesn't work out for us, it no longer shakes our faith. It makes us quizzical and want to troubleshoot and fix it because we know, of course it's gonna work. It always works. If you haven't been able to make things work, that's not okay, we want things to work for you, not just occasionally, but consistently.

If they're not working consistently, it's time to troubleshoot. You can turn this around if you get within your sphere of influence and you work that pyramid and you get your pyramid focused on only that which you truly desire. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today. I so appreciate you.

Until next time, blessed be.