by Jason Miller
Go Beyond the Binary
Let's say that we got a result that fits the statement of intent enough that we can call it a win. Congratulations, your spell worked! Proof is in the pudding, right? You are now unassailable and your methods should not be questioned. Nope. There is more to evaluating success than just the binary “Did it work? Yes/No.” There are other questions to be asked.
Did it work in a short time frame? Did it work according to the wording but not the intent? Did the result come with unexpected complications? Did the spell produce a quality result or could it have been better?
Back in 2009, a friend asked me to make him a spirit bottle for employment. I did and I put a lot into it. Because this person is someone I knew personally I really wanted a good result. Unfortunately, despite the effort, it was the middle of the Great Recession, and he was in a professional field crowded with applicants. It was 2010 before he finally got a job. He wrote to tell me that my spell finally worked. I replied that I was happy that he found a job, but eight months is not within the acceptable parameters for me to consider it a success. Rather than just take the win, I worked with him to unpack what happened and brainstorm what I could do to expedite success under these less-than-ideal circumstances.
The next person who needed my help during the recession received a spell that called upon mercurial spirits that would speed things along and help with the networking. I also incorporated dirt from key places in the city where the client was looking for work. It worked much better for the next client.
Speaking of job-finding work, another funny story is when Manman Brigitte, the Haitian Queen of the Boneyard, got me a job interview. Quite a few years back, I had decided that I wanted to get a job with the state so that I would have solid benefits and good job security. I was taking civil service exams, but not getting much luck as far as interviews. It just so happened that I was at a ceremony where Manman Brigitte, Wife of the Baron Samedi and the Loa of Justice and the Grave, was being honored and I was asked to drink for her, to consume the rum in her place. Later that night, in the haze between sleep and awake, she came to me and asked me what I needed from her. I replied that I was just honoring her and did not want anything, but she insisted, so I told her about my troubles finding a job with the state.
One week later, I was called in for an interview for a state job. I would be working four 10-hour days with 3 days off a week, which was my ideal. Best yet, they wanted me to start immediately! That's a huge success, right? Not so fast.... The job was as a security guard at a hospital for the criminally insane—something I was not interested in at all. I could almost hear Manman's Laughter in the air. I got what I asked for—and very much in line with that spirit's nature—but not what I intended at all. I said thanks, but no thanks. It was a success technically, but I could do better.
Spirit Contact
Speaking of spirits, let's talk about what that actually means. I have probably referred to communications with spirits at least a dozen times in this book already, but never got very specific about what the means. It means different things at different times, in fact. Sometimes spirits are evoked and communicate as directly and as clearly as if they were a person in the room. At other times, I enter into a trance and receive either messages that may seem fuzzy because of the nature of trance states, or may be in coded “Twisted Language” that needs to be unpacked symbolically. Still other times, spirits may speak through simplistic methods like divination, flashes of inspiration, and omens, to downright world-shaking mystical visions, where one's entire conception of reality falls away.
These things are certainly not the same and should not be treated as the same. If you are visualizing the Archangel Gabriel in the Western Quarter while performing the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, he does not need to speak or communicate at all; the mere empowering of your visualization with his presence is enough to call it a success. If you are praying to Gabriel during a spell to affect the timing of a project, then a flash of a vision or an indication via divination that he will do the work is a success. If you are doing Trithemius's evocation of Gabriel as Archangel of the Lunar Powers into a crystal held in an ebony Monstrance, then it is his visual appearance and clear communication that you should count as success. Anything less would not be worth the trouble. Yet, I have often had people perform full evocations and tell me that it was a success because they felt the spirit's presence or had a dream afterward. This has happened to me on numerous occasions, but when it does, I don't count it as a success. If I do, it is partial at best.
If you are performing a month's long retreat on Gabriel in order to gain the ability to have prophetic visions in the way that Daniel did, then even a vision of Gabriel in a crystal is insufficient, as what you are seeking is to behold the divinity in its totality in the way that Zachariah, Mary, Mohammad, and Joseph Smith1 claimed to have beheld him.
We must always ask what level of contact is appropriate for the operation we are performing and the needs that we have. You really don't need to rip the roof off reality in a full evocation to visible appearance just to ask Haniel to help you find a boyfriend; her blessing on a Venus talisman will do the job. On the other hand, let's not pretend that everything is a success when it's not.
Improve Your Perception/Projection Ratio
Even more important than the level of manifestation is the matter of separating your own voice from that of a spirit. I call this the perception/projection ratio. In every communication, we can assume that there is some amount of true perception, and some amount of projection from the person having the communication. Assume that whatever your experience of a spirit is, it is never 100 percent pure perception. If even memories and perceptions of physical events are not 100 percent accurate, how much more, then, are communications with subtle forces and non-physical beings subject to our own projections? Work to improve this ratio, but assume that there is always something of the spirit and something of yourself in the communication.
Does the spirit or deity tell you any new information that you didn't already know? Does the spirit or deity ever tell you that you are wrong or disagree with you? Does the spirit or deity ever challenge you?
If the answer to these questions and other questions like them is no, then chances are your projection/perception ratio is skewed too far in the projection side.
You may be bristling as you read this. People do not like hearing that treasured communications they have had may be less than completely true. In some of my courses, I routinely dismiss people's visions and communications during the first few months, no matter what they are. For some students, this is the first time that they have ever had someone challenge them on something like this. They have either worked solitary or been part of the Occult social media scene where everything gets validated as a matter of course. It's not that I don't think that what they are experiencing has value or a grain of truth, but I start off rejecting those communications because I want them to strive for deeper communication rather than settling for the surface-level chatter. There is so much more to be had.
So how do we improve this? Meditation is my first and best bit of advice. Even if you never get past the stage of focusing on breath and quickly getting distracted, you are still learning to know your mind. You are learning the feel and sound of your own thoughts, and how to tell when you are distracted from what you are supposed to be focused on. These are important skills to possess and meditation is the best and fastest way to obtain them.
The Take-Away
Harold wants to know how to judge Salphegor's work. Our demon here assures him he will find his rubber ducky, and that then is the proof. Anything less is failure and there should be no quibbling about that. Better to admit a failure than to fake success.
There are still other questions to be asked, though. What can you do to make spells work better, faster, stronger? What different angles can you approach the same problem through?
What level of spirit manifestation do you require? D
id Harold need to evoke Sal to perform this task? Probably not. Are you overdoing it by summoning a spirit in full for a simple spell? Are you underperforming by accepting a dream or sign from a complex evocation ritual?
Are you stuck in a binary yes/no for success or embracing a spectrum of results that can be tweaked and improved? If so, re-think it.
Key 16:
Enchant for What You Don't Deserve
One of the great gifts of being a teacher is that you get to learn from your students. This is especially useful when your students take your teachings and find new framing to express them. A few years ago, my student Andrew Maxam threw down the glove to his fellow students in a way that struck me as particularly useful, and I have been repeating the challenge for myself ever since: “Conjure something that you want, but think you don't deserve.”
I loved the idea so much, and it helped reframe my thinking to push myself farther as a Sorcerer and a person. I have expanded on it and included it here as our 16th Key.
Set Point Theory
In my book Financial Sorcery, I wrote about set point theory, which this key is closely tied to. In 1982, Dr. William Bennett and Joel Gurin were looking for an explanation as to why repeated dieting is unsuccessful in producing long-term change in body weight or shape. What they came up with is called “set point theory.” According to this theory, there is a control system built into every person dictating how much fat he or she should carry—a kind of thermostat for body fat. Some individuals have a high setting whereas others have a low one. Whatever attempts at dieting are made will revolve around the gravity of this set point. Though Bennett and Gurin were speaking about a physiological process related to weight, psychologically speaking, we have all have set points for everything from health to wealth to love partners to spirituality.
Most of us have a surprisingly firm set point regarding our station in life. We get programmed to expect certain things. No matter what we say we want, we tend to gravitate to those expectations. This field of gravity is more difficult to escape than you might think. No matter what we may want, somewhere deep in the mind is a nagging thought of what we are “supposed to have” or what we “deserve.” If we fall below these points, we enter into mental distress because things are not as they should be. If, however, we begin to rise far above the set point, we begin to get dizzy at this new height and again experience distress. What if we cannot maintain it? What if we fail? What do we do at this level? And so we gravitate back down to our nice, comfortable set point.
Ever hear someone say, “She's out of my league?” She wasn't. He just thought she was because his set point was dictating what he thought he could and couldn't attain. Ever see Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich? That, my friends, is a man who did not let his set point dictate what was possible as far as women who would be interested in him.
I wrote a whole book on financial Sorcery that devotes a long key to set points, so I won't harp on about wealth too much. Suffice to say that when you grow up in a neighborhood where everyone is poor and doing unskilled labor or just flat-out unemployed, it becomes normalized in your psyche. If you grow up in a blue-collar family where people held careers as plumbers and electricians, that becomes the goal post, and children who go on to pursue college often tell me about how they are razzed by their families and abandoned by friends who see them as elitists. You can move up the socioeconomic ladder and find the educated white-collar middle-class balk and bristle at those who live in the highest strata of society, the 1 percent. Such heights violate their set points. It works in the reverse as well. In a neighborhood where everyone's parents are lawyers, doctors, or bankers, the child who wants to become an artist is seriously attacking his set point and will have it assaulted by those around him as well.
We even play this game with ourselves about our spirituality. There is a story about the great Tibetan master Milarepa being questioned by his students about his former lives. Milarepa was known to manifest many different Magical powers that defied explanation. Because of his Magical and spiritual attainments, his students figured that he must have been someone important in a previous life. They insisted he tell them what siddha or powerful Buddha he was in his past lives, or what yidam or spiritual power he was an emanation of. Milarepa scolded them for not having faith in the path, because if they did, they would realize that you do not have to be someone special from birth; anyone who followed the path could attain Buddhahood in this very life. This, however, was a violation of these followers' spiritual set point. They were comfortable following someone else, not being Buddhas themselves.
We often assume that great realization and Magical power is reserved for those who are born into it, those who deserve it. Some believe that Magic can only be really done if you are born with a caul, the seventh son of a seventh son, or born on a Magical date like St. John's Eve. Some believe that enlightenment is reserved for Saints and siddhas. But the Saints and siddhas assure us that enlightenment and Magic are, in fact, for us.
So whatever it is that you are working on, you should know that you probably have a set point that has been established by the circumstances of your birth, appearance, upbringing, and luck. In Financial Sorcery, I provide a ritualized moving of this set point, but it's really just a matter of reinforcing and achieving the new set point and holding it for a while until it becomes normal. You can ritualize it if you like, but it's perhaps better just to do it.
The first time I ever had $10,000 sitting in an account that was not immediately meant for something else, it blew me away. I felt discomfort just from having that fifth digit appear in my bank balance. I decided at that moment that was my new set point, and any time it dipped below that, I would feel an urgent discomfort that comes from dipping below where you should be. I have moved that point and others a few times now, but there is a difference between moving a set point and blowing it to smithereens. This section of the book is about advancing forward in our work, so let's blow stuff up!
Set Point Sacrilege
I will again quote Andrew:
Maybe it's a raise that you think you haven't worked for, or the attention of someone special that you think is out of your league, or just some fun or pretty gift you'd like to give yourself. This has been a pretty powerful mental short-circuit trick for me; a lot of the time I get distracted by thoughts of whether or not I've “earned” (in mundane or spiritual terms) the result that I'm summoning. Doing this every once in a while helps me remember that it doesn't really matter who “deserves” success or not. What matters is whether we make it happen for ourselves.
For people who are ostensibly dedicated to causing change through the radically strange and subtle methods of Sorcery, I am amazed at how many of us are trapped by ideas of what they do and don't deserve. I say “us” because I was once one of these people myself. Sorcerers who turn to the Gods and spirits to tell them what they deserve and don't deserve are hardly Sorcerers at all.
Let's be blasphemously blunt: Screw what you deserve or don't deserve. Just go get it because you want it.
No faux cosmic “it is my true will” justification; go for it just because you want it.
Don't invent some reason you “need” it to justify it. Just do it because you want it.
If there is some kind of karmic-rewards point system that monitors what people get based on what they deserve, trust that it is far too complicated for our slightly evolved monkey brain to figure out, and assume that if you want it, and it's not going to directly hurt anybody, it's okay to go for it.
If you are concerned about God or Gods having a destiny for you, then let them worry about that. Assume that your desire for a car with third-row seating is in fact part of that plan and let them tell you otherwise.
I am not saying to just do whatever you want and screw the consequences. That's a whole other ball of wax. This is not a license to screw people over, swindle your neighbors, or in any way rampage through the world less ethically than you normally would. You don't need to. Be
honest, but be bold and go for what you want, whether you think you deserve it or not.
I am also not saying to drain your bank account for crap you can't afford. This is not about treating yourself because you deserve it. Going for something that you don't feel you deserve entails making yourself worthy of having that thing and able to possess it. If you just run out and spend the mortgage money on Occult books, that is not enchanting for what you don't deserve; it is acting stupid because you think you do deserve it.
This key is about blaspheming against the very idea that you do or don't deserve anything. Like reciting the Lord's Prayer backward, you are not moving your set point anymore; you are denying it actively and reclaiming its power as your own.
We're Not Worthy
Among some people who work the system outlined in Geoff Cobb's classic New Avatar Power, there are those who claim that the ritual invoking the spirit Elubatel has turned their lives upside down because they are not worthy of the success that they asked for. This hasn't happened to me with that system, but Jophiel once told me something similar when I was doing a success working for myself. “You are not worthy,” he said. Rather than bow my head and accept this as a judgment of my personal worth, I questioned him further. What does “not worthy” mean? How do I become worthy? It turned out the issue really was not about any kind of moral worth but was instead a matter of arranging my life to be able to handle the gift I was asking for.
In my case, I was asking for a large increase in wealth, but my life was not set up to accommodate its manifestation in any reasonable way: I worked one job with set hours, fixed salary, and nowhere in the company to get promoted to. There was no other reasonable means for money to come in. I would end up just like Harold the Sorcerer in Key 6, working twice as many hours.