The Elements of Spellcrafting

by Jason Miller

  Thankfully, with the turning of the millennium came a different attitude toward the spirits. Occultists began returning to the Grimoires and traditions of the past, and Chaos Magicians started to find that, contrary to what they had been told, the spirits did matter and that Scrooge McDuck was a poor substitute for Clauneck.

  Sadly, humans seem to be really bad at finding middle ground for anything, and so no sooner did spirits once again take their rightful place in the arcana of Magic, did people start arguing that spirits were responsible for all Magic. People began to discuss a “spirit model” that was opposed to an “energy model” or “mental model”—as if Magic has to contain itself to just one means of working. The idea that all Magic is performed by outside spirits takes us away from the simple fact that we are spirits.

  Spirits in the Material World

  Just like the Police song “Spirits in the Material World,” trapped within these deteriorating sacks of protoplasm is a luminous and powerful spirit—some would even say a God. In fact, for as hard on humanity as Christianity can be, even Jesus pointed out that “I said, ye are Gods.”3

  Beings we commonly call spirits and Gods do not have bodies and manifest across a spectrum that is hard for us to even fully conceptualize. We do possess bodies and are, at least for this lifetime, trapped in this hard-edged world of form, but within that body is a spirit. The body is not necessarily a bad thing, though. Indeed, one of the things that spirits find enjoyable about offerings is the foothold into the material that we have naturally. We are constrained by the body for sure, but that does not mean we have no access to Magic that is facilitated entirely by our own spirit, mind, and—yes—body.

  You know how I first knew Magic was real? I wanted something to happen, concentrated on it happening, held my breath, felt with my mind for the future that I was aiming for, and kind of mentally shifted myself to that reality. No spirits. No angels. No Gods. If that sounds like a vague description of what happened, that's because the explanation takes an entire course to unpack, but the actual doing of it was simple and natural—because I am a spirit, and spirits are capable of doing spirit shit!

  I am not alone. Many of the people who have been called Witches or healers through the years do not necessarily have spirit familiars, ceremonial systems, or anything that they study as Magic. They are just people whose inner life was able to spill out into their outer life—because they are spirits.

  We are spirits. That's why in Tibetan Magic, you have training to raise the body temperature through breath, to breathe mantras into other people, even to switch bodies if the Yogas of Naropa are to be believed! That is why people that try Sex Magic usually are successful with it. That is why some people can heal with their hands, other can prophesize, and yet others can simply will things to happen. It is why Spare could cast a sigil that would bring the roof caving in, or why William S. Burroughs could curse a place by sitting in front of it, playing the sounds he recorded the day before but in reverse.

  Am I saying not to summon spirits or invoke the Gods? No! If you have read this far, you have already read about times that I or my students have worked with spirits to fruitful ends. What I am saying is that you are part of the process of Magic whether you work with spirits or not. Your abilities, actions, and mind all play a role in the outcome.

  Spirits Teaching Spirits

  One of the fun things that can happen is that spirits evoked by a Magician often end up telling the Sorcerer how to do something rather than just doing it themselves. Imagine thinking that all Magic happens because of spirits, and the first thing the spirit does is insist that you do it yourself! They may instruct you on gesture, energy, breath, or materia that will either aid you in your work or enable you to do the Magic yourself entirely. Sometimes these are the very things that get passed on in traditions of Magic, Witchcraft, Tantra, and even mainstream religions. Sometimes the tricks they teach are just for that one operation, never to be repeated.

  In the last apartment I rented before buying a house, a neighbor moved in next door who was excessively loud at all hours of the night. Attempts to talk to my neighbor and get him to act like an adult resulted in threats and belligerence. I decided to perform an expulsion ritual, commonly known as a hot footing. I laid down hot-foot powder, prayed the Psalms, and asked hot spirits to make him move. I did everything right, but I got bupkis for my efforts. If anything, the hot energy circulating around seemed to make him louder and more unbearable. So, I conjured a familiar spirit that I work with and asked what needed to be done. She instructed that to make this person move, what I needed to do was stand in the street in front of his house in the middle of the night and listen to the song “Sinnerman” by Nina Simone. That's it. Just stand and stare and listen.

  It sounds stupid, right? But that's what I did, and when I did it, I understood. I stood out there angry at him for being such a bad neighbor, and identifying this anger with the driving music seemed to amplify it and sharpen it. As the words came up I ground my teeth and imagined him as the Sinnerman; I pictured him running to the rock looking for a place to take shelter from the Magic. But everyplace he goes to hide, he is shunned. Listen to the song and you will know what I mean.

  Just like in the song, he runs bleeding to the river, then to the sea and is rebuffed. He prays to the Lord, but the lord tells him to go to the Devil who was waiting. Then as Nina Simone shouts, “Power!” (Power Lord!), I felt my own power growing and pressing upon him. I was good and truly in a trance. I could feel the powders that I had previously laid down suddenly spring to life. I could see spirits that are attracted to this wrathful working come and infest his dwelling. It was satisfying and draining and powerful—and all I did was stare and listen to a song, allowing to guide me into using my own powers of spirit to do the work I needed done.

  And done it was. He started staying away from home more often and eventually broke his lease and left less than a month after my spell. I don't know why; I just know that he skulked out in the middle of the night like a Sinnerman looking for shelter. Good riddance. As soon as he left, I went and cleansed his apartment and did a solid cleansing of all those wrathful energies and entities. I was living next door, after all, and wanted to attract a new, quieter neighbor.

  This approach is not something I would have thought to do myself, and it's something that some people who are very hung up on Occult trappings probably think is stupid. The fact is, though, that it worked. A spirit provided the instructions, but it was me, as a spirit, doing the Magic. It gave me new respect for the power of music in Magic, but in the end, I doubt the experiment would be effective if repeated. It was a one-time instruction.

  Leaving the Body

  Of course, nowhere is it more evident that we are spirits than when we have an out-of-body experience, traveling in the spirit vision, or in lucid dreams. A full discussion of the methods of creating an out-of-body experience is beyond the room we have in this book,4 but I assume most readers are familiar with the concept.

  In the astral body, one can visit others, implant ideas, and perform direct healing, cursing, or blessing on people, just as would a spirit that was summoned. One of the most fruitful things you can do with a spirit you encounter in the astral is ask how to perform acts of Magic that they themselves perform. Just like my local spirit instructed me to listen to a song and stare, you might get something simple, or as with my encounters with Hekate, you might get something so complex it takes more than a decade to learn and master. The spirits can give the most amazing responses about how to hold the mind, raise the voice, and gesticulate the body—all making Magic.

  Energy

  As spirits once again took their rightful place amongst Magicians in this century, “energy” became the new thing that people frowned upon speaking of. Yet, it's probably the best term in English we have for concepts like prana and chi, as well as the Elemental Powers and Magnetic Fluid written about by early 20th century Occultists like Franz Bardon, whose Initiation Into Hermetics i
s one of the best Magical training manuals of all time.

  In that book, Bardon describes how to infuse a room, an object, or even a person with elemental energy patterned to a specific purpose. In the early 1990s, Matthew Brownlee and I threw a party during which we use used Bardon's techniques to charge different rooms according to the elements. By the end of the party, people in the Air-infused kitchen were having lively intellectual conversations, people in the Earth-infused living room were sitting like lumps watching television, people in my Water-charged bedroom were having heart-to-heart emotional sharing discussions, and people in Matt's Fire-charged room were doing...let's just say passionate things.

  This idea of using energy in Magic directed by the Magician is widely used in Tibetan Tantra as tron-du, the sending and receiving of lights: hooked red lights that charm people with the power of the mantra you are chanting, golden lights that bring wealth with the power of Dzambhala, white rays that bestow the healing power of Tara when you blow on a patient's wound. All energy able to be directed by us because we are spirits.

  The Take-Away

  Salphegor wants to get Harold to take some responsibility, or at least participate in the Magic he is trying to do. Harold doesn't seem open to it. He doesn't see himself as a spirit. The problem this key addresses is the problem Sorcerers face when they stop being part of the Magic and their practice turns into buying or begging favors from Gods, demons, or whatever you can get to listen.

  You matter in the equation and you need to figure out what your role is in the strategy. What role does the verbal, mental, or material actions you take play in your spell? If there are none, what can you add of yourself? How does this working feed or further you as a spirit?

  Key 12:

  Check Your Links

  Did your spell fail?

  Did the demon not accomplish its task?

  Did the Hoodoo that you do, not know who to do the Hoodoo to?

  Sorcerers and web developers share a problem that might be the culprit: bad or missing links, which is our 12th Key of Spellcrafting.

  Prayers for intercession are just utterances to a power that you hope will intercede on your behalf. As we have seen, Sorcery is a bit more active than that. We expect a result and are participating in the process of getting it done. One of the ways that we participate and make our Sorcery more than simple prayers is by providing a Magical link.

  Links to people, places, or even situations are essential to Sorcery, and when I talk to students and clients about spells that that fell short of the mark, the lack of a good link is often the problem.

  What Are Links?

  Think of the Magical link as a targeting system for Sorcery. It is how your spell, spirit, or power knows who or what to effect. Taking the time to provide a good link will help your Magic from yielding up the proverbial “404 Not Found.”

  We have shown that Sorcery is good at influencing events and minds. The amount of influence it has on any given situation depends on many factors: degree of probability, powers of the forces invoked, the gifts and development of the Sorcerer, and a way to grab hold of the material world. This last thing is what the link provides.

  Because Magic works with spiritual, energetic, and unseen forces, the material links bring it into the world of form.

  What Makes a Good Link?

  Like most things in Magic, it is not a matter of simply having something or not. If this book accomplishes one thing, I hope that it's breaking people out of simplistic binary thinking. Links are not all created equal. They can be rated according to relevancy and intimacy.

  As far as intimate links go, the most classic links to a person you want to affect are of course hair and fingernails. Not only are these intimately connected to the person, but they are regularly discarded and easily gotten from a bathroom trashcan, hairbrush, or a Supreme Court Justice's soda can.1

  Sometimes people go the extra mile and steal unwashed underwear, thinking that if it's something a bloodhound could sniff out to find someone, it might be even better for Magic. This is not unsound thinking; in fact, there are some types of necromancy in which the bones of a dog as well as that of a human are used so that the dog can hunt down a target for the human spirit.

  If you are not willing or able to get the nasty bits, a signature is a good link too. Even a digital picture of a signature from a scanned document can be a great link, as it is that person's assertion of selfhood. Like a politician's attack ad, it says “Yes, this is me and I authorize this message.”

  Pictures are okay, but in practice, they work best alongside of other links. Lots of people look like you, after all. You might argue that the picture, being a captured image of a specific person, is even better than a signature, but there is something about the power of names and sigils that seems to make it better. Pictures can help you focus and visualize, and some people swear by them, but for me the link that you use in a spell should be more direct than that.

  Apart from intimacy, relevancy is also important. If you are trying to influence someone's mind, hair from their head is best. If you are trying to cultivate more sex in your marriage, hair from lower on the body would be better. If it's someone at work, then an item that he or she uses on the job would be more relevant than something he or she uses on weekends. If you are trying to limit someone's movements or get them to leave a place, the dirt from their footprint is a classic link. Think symbolically.

  Links to Place

  Not all links are to people. Often it links to a place that you need. Dirt is the number-one link. The reason that graveyard dirt works so well as a component of spells is that it is a link to the spirit whose grave the dirt was purchased from. Footprints work because they are a link to the person who made the print. Dirt from other places can be taken or purchased in the same way. The earth holds memory, and the dirt from someone's home can be used to effect the people in that home. The dirt from key places in a town or city can be used to effect events and laws and patterns within that city.

  One of my students, who prefers to remain anonymous, put together a list of places to gather dirt from that are outside the graveyard/crossroads box:

  From near a legislature building to promote dialogue and working together.

  From a newspaper office or post office to aid the spread of an idea.

  From a hospital for healing (use due diligence and check out the success rate of that particular hospital for the illness you're dealing with).

  From an outdoor art sculpture for artistic talent and ideas.

  From a sports arena for athletic ability or for winning a contest that involves skill (again, pick a team that doesn't objectively suck).

  From a hotel or airport to increase opportunity for travel.

  From a river bank for releasing of ideas/relationships/etc.

  From Graceland, if you're trying to get arrested.2

  There are a lot of other things we can grab from a place other than dirt, of course. Mitt Romney famously referenced the Citizens United SCOTUS decision by saying, “Corporations are people, my friend.” Well if corporations are people, then logos are links! So are contracts. So is someone's desk nameplate. If corporations want to be people, treat them like people and bless them for doing well and jinx the crap out of them when they do ill.

  Sorcerous Sabotage

  If you can't grab links from a target person or dirt from a place, you can always bring your Magic to them. On the positive side of things, this is exactly what a talisman is: a bit of Magic that captures the power of a ritual, a spirit, or an astrologically potent moment and brings that influence to the wearer. The talisman is a link.

  On the less savory side of Sorcery, this is where planting hot-foot power and goofer dust somewhere that your target will walk comes into play, but you shouldn't limit yourself to powders. Planting sigils behind pictures, condition oils in shampoos, and Trojan gifts are all tricks I have seen done. Sorath, the Demon of the Sun, once instructed me to plant a mirror with his sigil on it so tha
t the reflection would shine into a certain office room every day. That was a jinx, but I used the same tactic with a different spirit to promote healing as well. It was an effective technique that I have employed a few times now.

  In Political Magic, the two biggest problems are that famous people have thousands of people directing prayers and spells their way for their protection and undoing. This makes your spell just one influence among thousands. The other problem is that it is hard to get a direct link and certainly not worth the legal trouble one might get into. One wonders what Martin Shkreli wanted with Hillary Clinton's hair? Whatever it was, I am sure it wasn't worth going to jail for.

  Planting Magical links at the site that someone will be speaking gets around both of these issues. Your spell has more impact because the target is standing where the link is directly, and you don't need any link to bring back to your temple.

  Is It Good Enough?

  Just because you have a good link, doesn't mean it's good enough. People get too binary and caught up in thinking something either works or it doesn't, when they should be thinking about things on a scale from good to better to best. Even if you have a link, that doesn't mean your spell wouldn't perform better with an improved one.