by Jason Miller
Now unless you are a botanist or a philosopher, you might not know what a Rhizome is. A Rhizome is a subterranean network of stems that sends roots and shoots from all nodes. They are unpredictable and defy linear and hierarchal organization in the way that say, a tree would conform to. Different philosophers have used the Rhizome as a metaphor for the spread of information, media, culture, and even consciousness.
Psychologist and mystic Carl Jung pointed out:
Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away—an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.1
Magic is like this, a force that rests under the surface, blooming above the surface when Magicians wield it. This is true of individual spells, entire traditions, and indeed the whole of Magic itself. Of course, one of the problems of the Rhizome is its refusal to be contained and conform to a structure. The Rhizomal nature of Magic is one reason that Magic has been so feared, and why those who wield it are vilified by people who like a nice, orderly universe.
Spell Spread
Speaking about the Rhizomic spread of culture in his book 1000 Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze noted something that I feel applies to Magic as well: “Rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.”2 The journal Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge notes further:
...spreads like the surface of a body of water, spreading towards available spaces or trickling downwards towards new spaces through fissures and gaps, eroding what is in its way. The surface can be interrupted and moved, but these disturbances leave no trace, as the water is charged with pressure and potential to always seek its equilibrium, and thereby establish smooth space.3
The philosophy of how this applies to Magical traditions and Magic overall is worth pondering, but it is this spread applied to specific spells that I want to address in this key. Spells spread into all areas of our lives and even the lives of those around us. That's how they work. Some have suggested that spell results are like water, and take the path of least resistance to their goal, but in practice, they are more Rhizomic and resist even that organizational restriction. I have often looked back and wondered why my Sorcery seemed to take the most winding and perplexing route to manifest and affected so many other things along the way.
Knowing that your Magic will spread in unanticipated ways is important. We can use caveats as discussed in Key 6 to limit the ways our spells can damage people, always remembering that the more we limit things the more we restrict our outcomes, but that doesn't mean that we will be able to control exactly how our Magic manifests and what it influences. Likewise, we can do whatever we can to make our life more enchantable, as per the instructions in Key 3, but that doesn't mean we will be able to have a full grasp on it.
After my second book came out, and I decided to make a go of being a Teacher of Sorcery as a serious career. I was putting a lot of hours in at night, but still needed to keep my full-time day job to pay the bills and put food on the table. I did a spell to increase my customers and income from Strategic Sorcery and immediately lost my day job right afterward. That's the Rhizome for you; the spell spread. It seemed to me like the path of least resistance would have been to simply bring more people into my course. Instead, it removed a desperately needed day job, which did in the end give me more time to work on Strategic Sorcery, gaining more customers and income.
This is where Divination comes in handy, telling us not only whether our work will succeed or not, but also whether its manifestation will have any unforeseen effects as it spreads into areas of our life that we did not intend. It is important to keep in mind Donald Rumsfeld's famous assessment that in any situation “there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.”4
Divination can help with these unknown unknowns, but even the best diviner is not fool-proof. They see what they see. Anyone that claims otherwise can prove me wrong by providing a solid projection of which five companies in the S&P 500 will have the biggest gains next year. You can be right, and we can get rich at the same time. The Rhizome of Magic refuses even to conform to divination.
Avoid Conflicting Spreads
Another problem that the Rhizomic nature of Magic presents is that it can be very hard to manage conflicting spreads at the same time.
A few years back, I was doing some work for a dear friend going through a divorce. I won't get into too many specifics, but it involved work designed to push people away and get them out of your life. It was working out very well. During this same period, I was also doing work to draw clients to a local business, but that work was not panning out very well. When I did a divination and investigation to determine why, the spirits I was consulting informed me that it is very hard for spirits and energies of increase and attraction to take hold while I am simultaneously dealing with spirits of decrease and repulsion. Each of these spells was spreading through my life but the spells for increasing were being choked out by the repelling Sorcery that I had begun first.
Another way to look at this would be like surrounding yourself with people of a certain type. Doing spells like hot-footing, binding, and so on, surround you with spirits and energies that might be akin to surrounding yourself with tough enforcers, gang members, or otherwise violent people. Doing spells to build a business and bring in extra income would be a very different crowd of spirits or people. Suffice to say, it is hard to hold a party where both a gang of soccer hooligans and the Rotary Club are both invited. These are difficult Rhizomes to have growing in your life at the same time.
Spell Bleed
Spells you do, even for others, tend to bleed into your life. Therefore after casting a curse, many Rootworkers take a hyssop bath and recite Psalm 51 (“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow”) to stop the bleed of that spell into their life. Exorcists recite the same Psalm before performing an exorcism to clear themselves of the Rhizomic nature of what they perceive as sin, and which might hamper their abilities to perform the exorcism.
This is why many people who have altars to “hot” spirits, beings that are not necessarily evil but are perhaps overly passionate and wrathful, keep those altars outside the house. Of course, because we ourselves are spirits, we are never fully separated from the work we do, and people who routinely engage in wrathful solutions to problems find themselves surrounded by such energies and spirits at all times. Jim Rohn once suggested that we are all the average of the five people we spend the most time with. I don't believe it's quite that simple, but just like our personalities are effected by the people we surround ourselves with, they are effected by the spirits and powers we traffic in as well.
This is why I recommend that unless you are in a job where violence and restriction are the norm, you limit the amount of time you spend on curses, bindings, jinxes, and such. That stuff bleeds into the rest of your life and messes with the more constructive forces that most of us want to focus on.
Of course, spell bleed is not all bad. Many times, I have done prosperity work for others and received increased prosperity myself. I have often performed healings and felt invigorated and energetic afterward. All of which is, of course, welcome. The Rhizome is not bad; it just is.
Meta Magic Mediators
Sometimes a Sorcerer must do what a Sorcerer must do regardless of how it spreads. If we work on behalf of clients, we may often find ourselves in situations where we have to do exactly what I warn against above and work conflicting Magics, incr
easing or healing for one client, while pushing away and binding for another. This is what is sometimes referred to as “working with both hands.” Usually this term is just thrown around as a label for anyone who will work both malevolent and benevolent Magic, or perhaps with angels and demons as well. There is a sort of neutral moral statement here implying neither good nor evil, but if we view it from the standpoint of the actual mechanics of spells that have competing spreads, both of which bleed into your life, it becomes more complicated than that.
Given the Rhizomic nature of Sorcery, the way it spreads horizontally through the world, finding new spaces to surface and bloom, the way it defies ordinary modes of organization, it can be helpful to have the aid of a power that specializes mediating manifestation and managing Magic itself. This falls under what I like to call Meta-Magic, Magic that effects Magic. Those in ceremonial Magic circles will be familiar with the Holy Guardian Angel spoken of in The Sacred Magic of Abramelin as well as the Paredros in the Papyrii Grecae Magicae. Both spirits can serve this role if you have done the work to gain their knowledge and conversation, which is no easy task. Many books have been written about just this work. If you can manage it, they become trusted guides and advisors as well as assistants in managing your Magic.
Another thing you can do is to work with a spirit of Magic itself. Just like a God of wealth or love, there are Gods who oversee Magic and Witchcraft. Hekate is who I rely upon in these matters, and she has taught me much during the last 17 years to aid me in managing the Magic I put out into the world. She is the patron of my first book for a reason, and has had an impact on everything I have done.
The Saints and spirits of great practitioners who were once alive is yet another avenue to seek this Magical mediation through. For this, I rely on St. Cyprian, who excels at managing and mediating between powers that might otherwise never mix. In fact, here in the New World, this is one of his major roles, which can be seen in the practices of the Peruvian Curandero's Mesa, or field of power. The mesa is usually laid out on the ground in a very intricate display of power objects divided into two or more fields. In his book Eduardo El Curandero: The Words of a Peruvian Healer, Eduardo Calderon Palomino details the three fields of his Mesa: Campo Justiciero, “the field of the divine judge,” on the right; the Campo Ganadero, “the field of Satan or the Sly-Dealer” (here Ganadero or Rancher is an epitaph of Satan), on the left; and the Campo Medio, the mediating field of San Cyprian, in the middle. During healings and San Pedro Ceremonies, it is the middle field that is the focus—not a matter of exorcising devils, but of finding a balance between two opposing forces, two competing Rhizomic spell spreads.
Ruperto Navarro, a Peruvian Brujo operating in Trujillo, is another Curandero who made a pact with the Devil as a young man. Because of this pact, he is forbidden from working with Christ or any of the Christian Saints that most Curanderos work with—except for St. Cyprian. Navarro's Mesa is divided into three sections in a similar fashion to other mesas with the notable exception that the Ganadero side for harming is on the right and the Curandero side for healing is on the left—the reverse of traditional associations. St. Cyprian manages the middle field where he not only mediates the left and right sides of the mesa, but acts as the ambassador between Navarro's Diabolism and the Christian world that other Curanderos and most of Navarro's clients operate in.
The Take-Away
The problem that this key seeks to solve are those presented by the unruly and at times unmanageable manifestations of Magic. This is why in our cartoon, Harold is so angry. He has been cursing people and it has bled into his life. Are you considering the ways in which your spells might bleed into your life?
You solve this by managing your spells so that there are not competing spreads working against each other. Purify and cleanse yourself when finished with work whose Rhizomal spread you do not wish to carry. You can also seek the assistance of a mediating spirit whose authority helps manage the powers of Magic itself.
Part 3:
Advancing Your Craft
Moving Beyond the Basics
Key 15:
Judge Success Skillfully
I have heard more nonsense about how to judge the success of Magic than you might imagine. I have talked a lot of nonsense myself earlier in my career, when I was desperate for success and to show that Magic worked. For something that so many people love and care about, there are very few standards applied to how we judge success, yet success is all I ever hear about. Few people ever admit to Magic not working because that would bring up the possibility that the rest of the world is right and that Magic is not real. This key is not about judging whether Magic is real or not; if you have made it this far, I hope that issue is settled for you. This key is about how to evaluate the Magic you are doing.
Let the first lesson of this key be this: If you never fail to get a result from the spell, if you never fail at contacting the spirit, if the spirit never says things you don't want to hear, you are not really doing anything at all.
You are accepting such a low standard of success that either the smallest sign is sufficient for you to be happy, or you are giving in to fantasy. This might be okay for the community at large, but not for yourself or even those close to you. In the Occult social media, we all more or less accept each other's reports at face value. It's a game of “I believe in your superpowers if you believe in mine.” This helps keep the peace and allows for communication and validation without being impolite. A higher standard, though, should be applied to yourself as well as to your inner circle of peers and students if you have them. We learn as much or more from owning up to and examining failure as we do from success. This is how we get better at the art, and what this 15th Key of Spellcraft is all about.
The Feelies
Several years ago, I was involved in a working to protect a piece of land from development. This threatened place was one that we considered sacred and powerful, so a group was gathered to perform a ritual to empower the local spirits, bind the developers, and further open the veil of this space to us as Sorcerers. The group gathered in the woods at night, and it was one of those classically witchy moments when the spirits seemed to move between the shadows of the trees in the darkness and you could “see” the power being raised as color against the blackness of night. Everyone was wearing dark robes (I hate wearing robes, but I didn't organize the ritual) and as we chanted and moved in unison, the power that we raised was palpable. During the rite, candle flames jumped in a manner that can only be described as paranormal. After the ritual, everyone spoke about the weird visions we had, and how we could feel the power coursing through us. Our bones left lighter and our skin felt like it would jump right off our bodies. We all agreed that the ritual was a rousing success and one of the most powerful that we had done.
Four weeks later, development began exactly as planned and that area is now an “Active Adult Retirement Community.” We did not so much as delay the project by even one hour.
Let's contrast this experience with another ritual a few years after that. This ritual was done with a group of just three people, and its aim was to open better financial opportunities and provide a kind of “life reboot” for the couple I was working with. We did the rite, but there was no paranormal sign during the ritual. The spirits did not speak. There was nothing to see. No one felt any different after the ritual than we did before it. The ritual was carried out and the offerings made in a perfunctory manner with little fanfare. I got the distinct impression that the couple I was working with were so mired in their current troubles that they did not hold out much hope for success. It was uninspiring at best.
Not even five days after that ritual, a high school friend offered a job to one of them. The job would pay for them to move and was in a city with more opportunity than their current town. They got the reboot they were so desperately seeking.
The take-away is obvious: Getting the feelies is not really a sign of success. It is great if a ritual is beautiful and inspi
ring. It is good if you have an energetic or psychic experience from the ritual. It is even more awesome when there is some incredible synchronicity or paranormal event that occurs within the ritual. But in terms of actual success of a spell objective, none of that means much. This is not to say that the feelies and paranormal shenanigans do not occur with successful rituals. They do. Often. But in and of themselves, they are not a sign of success unless they were the purpose of the spell.
Sometimes the reason that the lightbulbs are exploding, the voices are whispering from between the angles of space, and you sense so much power coursing through you that you feel like Goku from Dragon Ball Z, is precisely because it's not going to its destination and accomplishing the goals of the spell. All that Magic is hanging around the ritual space and not getting where it needs to go—thus the wonderful feelies and paranormal events.
Maybe it's an insufficient link that's the issue. Perhaps the problem is that it's an unenchantable situation where the odds are just stacked against you too much. Possibly there is counter-Magic being employed against you. Or maybe, the Sorcery just wasn't good enough period. Whatever the reason, the spirits you called and the energy you raised are whipping around the temple messing with people's heads not because of your immense power, but because they don't have anywhere to go. If I had to bet on a reason, I would put my money on a bad link. Go back and read Key 12.