by Jason Miller
Key 18:
Failing Without Flailing
In Key 7, I told the story about my friend's store that was failing and how we conjured Tzadkiel to save it. Tzadkiel was not able to save the business as it existed, but was able to limit losses for my client and extract her from a situation that could have ended much, much worse. In that key, it was an example of how using Sorcery only when things are already an emergency limits your options. In this key, it is an example of accepting defeat with skill and positioning yourself for a fall: failing without flailing.
The Tower and The Star
When I read cards, I never read just one in isolation. Just as you need at least two words to work a sentence, I need at least two to show how to move from one state to another. The pair of La Maison Dieu and the Star is one that comes up when people need to let go of trying to fix everything, and instead should focus on letting it crash and burn in a controlled way.
One of the dangers of Sorcery that people don't think about is the ability to perpetuate a bad status quo with the power of Magic. It's just as dangerous as a demon or psychic attack. These are the reasons I say that emergency Magic can be very bad Magic. The job you hate, the relationship that is dead at the core, the place that you live in but cannot afford anymore—there are some situations that Magic cannot fix outright, but instead perpetuate for years on end—putting off the hard fall that eventually lets you regroup and do something even better.
A much better option sometimes is to use Magic to control the fall, so that we wind up minimizing damage, recovering quicker, and opening new opportunities.
In La Maison Dieu, we have the blasted tower and the two figures falling head on into the ground from the blasted tower. So what can we do?
Look at Le Toille. The two falling people have become the water in the jars. They are still going to wind up on the ground, but instead of falling, they are being poured out. It's a controlled event. They get to flow rather than splat.
The tower itself becomes the woman in the card. Is she a Goddess that you invoked to help deal with the situation? Is she simply the fact that when you acknowledge and plan for something, you at least have some influence as to how it happens?
Then I send them the canned response that I do not work in that field. If pressed, I will recommend someone who does, even though it's probably not a good idea.
Magic designed to force people to love you, sometimes by any means necessary, is present if not prevalent in pretty much all cultures. Buddhists are not beyond it and there are spells in the Arya Tara Kurukulla Kalpa for binding lovers and gaining the affections of important people. There are defixiones tablets from as late as the 6th century to Hekate, aimed at binding specific women to fall in love with the caster. There are spells that involve Saints like Magdeline and Bartholomew for stirring love in a target as well. There are spells in the books attributed to St. Cyprian for binding lovers, which is ironic because Cyprian himself became a Christian when Justina rebuked his Magic aimed to enslave her with love by making the sign of the cross.
People feel so passionate about getting or keeping the object of their affections that there are actually Love Curses. Probably the most popular is the summoning of the “Intranquil Spirit,” or sometimes the “Seven Intranquil Spirits” that will torture your target until they come to you. These spirits, that tradition holds are in Hell, are asked to “Capture the five senses of (name of target). To disturb him, and dominate him, and not let him have peace.”1
Do you remember the Astronaut Diaper Drive of 2007? She was an astronaut who was found with a steel mallet, a buck knife with a four-inch blade, a BB gun, and a map to her lover's house in her car. She was famously wearing a diaper because, well, who has time to stop for the bathroom when true love is on the line and you are heading to Florida to tie it up with duct tape?
When you are sitting down to do a spell, or hiring someone to do a spell, that involves getting a specific person to love you no matter what, to get them to love you or else, you are that astronaut.
It is traditional for sure, but when you consider how dependent women were on men for resources in the past, and how many men run off with younger women when the going gets tough—you can see why these spells might be justifiable in such places and times. But if you are reading this book, you are probably not in such a time and place. The people who make these requests are largely doing it out of obsession, not necessity.
That is your clue that you should let it go, whether it is an unrequited love interest, a business that you have sunk so much money into that you don't want to admit it's failing,2 or a court case that is not going to pan out. Know when to cut your losses and move on. Don't be the diaper-wearing astronaut.
“I Meant to Do That!”
Remember in Pee-wee Herman's Big Adventure when he wiped out doing a trick on his bike, but sprung right up again and said “I meant to do that!” Be like Pee-wee! Back in my early 20s, my life was kind of coming apart at the seams. I was living with a girlfriend and two other friends from high school in a row house in Trenton, New Jersey. My girlfriend had broken up with me, but we still lived in the same house, which is never fun. I crashed my car, again, and could no longer afford the insurance to stay on the road; in New Jersey, this is also not fun. On top of that, my roommates had just discovered a love of indoor fireworks, not the Elvis Costello metaphorical kind, but literally shooting off fireworks inside the house and out the window. I was fairly certain that our neighbors, who we didn't like at all, were soon going to kill us in our sleep. That would not be fun either. It was my first living situation after leaving home, and it was not going well.
I could have fought on, but instead I decided to call it quits. I stopped all the Magic I had going aimed at getting the girl back, finding money for the car insurance, and getting my roommates to stop blowing stuff up and just let it go. I let it all fall, because it was going to fall anyway eventually.
There was really no way around the car issue at this point, so I got on the phone with Matt, our illustrious illustrator, who I thought would make a better roommate. I needed to get out before my roommates literally blew up the house so we created a servitor to find an apartment in Center City, Philadelphia. No need for a car when you live in the middle of the city. We created the servitor at his apartment and just walked around the neighborhood that we wanted to live in. At one moment, we both saw a sort of shimmering presence on a building that we took to be our servitor, so we called the number of the realty office and voila, we found our apartment!
I made and offering to Papa Legba to help me find a job and new friends in the city, and went in the next day, just two weeks before moving in. That day I met Gendler, who was at that time literally the best possible person in the city to meet, because not only could he help me copy my resume and put the word out on a job, but he also knew every Occultist in the city. Within a week, I had a job lined up. Problem #2 now solved.
The girl problem would stay waiting for a bit as I dated for a couple years, but I eventually made an offering to Erzuli Freda on a street corner and shortly thereafter stopped living with Matt and moved in with the person who eventually agreed to marry me. The Erzuli offering was a little half-assed, as it was really in a style that would be more appropriate to an offering to Pomba Gira, but it worked, and an ironwork veve of Erzuli hangs over our bed to this day.
Some of the very best things I have in life—many of my best friends, my experiences in Thelesis Camp, my studies in Tibetan Buddhism, my time living with my best friend, and my wife—are the direct result of letting something that was going to fall apart fall with some skill and controlled descent.
The Take-Away
The problem is that no matter how great we are at Magic, we cannot control everything. If we use Magic to prolong our situation, we just delay the inevitable and make the fall harder. If we deploy increasingly intense Magic because we are obsessed, we become like Harold in the cartoon on page 179 and go too far. Listen to Salphegor
and just let it go.
It's better to perform divinations to see the outcome with and without Sorcerous intercession. Ask yourself, “Am I hanging on to this because I believe in what I am doing and think it will work out, or am I hanging on out of obsession or refusal to let go of sunk costs?”
Perform what Stoics call a Premeditatio Malorum: a meditation on the worst-case scenario that could result from letting things collapse. If you have decided to let things go, ask yourself:
Is there anything from this that I can salvage and retool into a new shape that might make a difference?
If not, what are the things you need to have in place to move on from here?
What preparations do you need to make to deal with the worst-case scenario?
What Sorcery can you do to help make sure the worst-case scenario does not come to pass?
This should give you the clarity you need to enchant your way into a better future.
Key 19:
Know Where Your Scarcity Lies
Magic is, and should be, a spiritual pursuit. People who call themselves Magicians are concerned solely with spiritual evolution. They walk the paths of the Tree of Life, invoke angels to teach divine knowledge, and sometimes initiate in Magical orders promising self-transformation. Many who call themselves Witches are interested in it as a religion, celebrating sabbats, and communing with old Gods for a sense of well-being and fulfillment, as well as a mystic path. I describe myself as a Sorcerer because while I have a deep interest in mysticism, I let the light of spirit shine through me outwardly in the form of spells that I put into the world. There is no mistaking that a Sorcerer does spells and is out there making things happen with Sorcery.
In this book, there are stories of enchanting for money, love, sex, protection, and healing. We enchant to address scarcity. Many people, especially those who only do emergency Magic, experience scarcity for the same things. The reason I wrote this book is to help get you past that point. But that doesn't mean that scarcity goes away—it just changes.
Money and Time
When you are starting out as an adult, you have a shortage of money, but lots of time. During this period, a DIY mentality serves you well: from mundane tasks like repairing your own plumbing and fixing your car, to Magical tasks like making your oils and Magical tools from scratch. You might be joining an order or taking classes on work-study rather than paying for them outright.
As you get older, you become more successful and money stops being in short supply. Unfortunately, people at this stage start to face a deficit of time. Careers, kids, community involvement, and advancing your passions make it impossible keep up with the demands. Suddenly you realize time is the scarcity rather than money. In a way, this is a worse situation, because time is not a renewable resource. You can make more money, but there's not much you can do about time.
Suddenly it makes sense to pay someone else to fix the sink and make your oils and tools. Yet people do not recognize this shift in scarcity and try to do everything themselves, focusing on getting more and more money instead of increasing the amount of time they have available.
If they recognized the scarcity shift, they might invoke Saturn instead of Jupiter so they can start streamlining what they do and make the same amount of money in less time. They might go to a Kalachakra empowerment or start working with a deity like Aeon or Zurvan to set them right with the rhythms of time. I invoked the Gnostic deity Abrasax for this years ago, and my life improved drastically. His name works out to be 365 according to gematria, and he oversees the turning of the stars and planets. His laughter created time itself. Though the original working was quite elaborate, I refresh it occasionally by reciting the word ablanathanalba 365 times—a time saver!
Time and Attention
Hopefully you get your time whipped into shape. You streamline your life so that business, family, and personal time are in good balance. Now your problem is attention: Even with maximized time and infinite money, you cannot give attention to everything, so where do you place it? Attention is a resource just like time and money, and it must be used wisely.
I talk to students who tell me they don't have time to do 100 mantras to Hekate a day, or to make offerings, or start a side business. These are often the same people I see spending hours debating politics on Facebook and who are passionate fans of literally every sci-fi or fantasy television show out there. These folks are not facing a scarcity of time; they are facing a scarcity of attention.
The Magic for addressing attention scarcity is not as easy as a few spells. I recommend meditation and self-examination more than anything. A good system of prioritizing tasks also helps. I use Zen To Done, which is a scaled-down version of David Allen's Getting Things Done system. Whatever tools you use, they should help you keep your attention on what is important, rather than what is momentarily distracting.
One piece of Magic I can recommend is to start every day by invoking the powers of the planet of that day. I focus on the Archangels, but you can easily adopt the practice for Greek, Babylonian, or Norse Deities who have all been associated with days of the week. This kind of day-to-day invocation helps place the day into focus and keep your timing solid.
As you look at where your attention lies, you decide to drop or minimize things that effect other people. You are bound to piss people off when you withdraw or do not give as much of your bandwidth as they would like. There are some things that, left to my own devices, I would not want to focus my attention on, but are important to my family or close friends, so I do it anyway. This is not a waste. This is giving.
Attention and Energy
Got money, time, and attention under control? Are you exhausted? Full lives are exhausting. Now your scarcity shifts to energy. Energy is a renewable resource. Non-Magical solutions come first: sleep, exercise, diet. Paying attention to this holy trinity of energy management gives you a good basis upon which to build. Any energy-increasing strategy that involved Magic, but not these three factors, is built on a shaky foundation and unlikely to succeed.
Once you have those under control, you can think about setting your rhythms for the day. There is evidence that scheduling your day around your ultradian rhythms keeps you energized. These are periods of high energy and productivity that last around 90 minutes followed by a break of about 20 minutes. If you can manage your day around this cycle, you will hold your energy, attention, and time in harmony better than if you work against it.
Other Types of Scarcity Shifts
Because money is something we deal with regularly, I use it for examples when I talk about Sorcery and, in this case, the scarcity shifts that come after your finances are under control. There are other types of scarcity that you can and should think about addressing, with or without Magic.
Because of the advent of smartphones, we are the first generation in history to have a scarcity of idle time. We listen to podcasts when we drive, we look at emails when we wait in line, and we post photos of our food to Facebook instead of sitting down and enjoying a meal. If you follow the advice of previous sections in this key, you might think I want you to kill idle time, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is vital for the mind to have time when it is awake but able to drift and play. These are the windows that insight and genius arise within, as well as the moments when omens and subtle forces might be perceived.
Remember the pick-up artist movement from years ago? Love them or hate them, these guys exceled at getting girls. Keeping a relationship, however, was not their forte. What do you do after your love spells have worked? You need to find what is scarce in your relationship and conjure that instead. What builds a strong relationship is often very different than what attracts people to us initially. Understanding, openness, communication—these things can be enchanted for just as well as finding love. Sadly, the amount of requests to make talismans of communication between partners is nowhere as high as the requests to bind lovers out of obsession. If there was more of the former, there might be l
ess need for the latter.
It's no secret that as we get older, our health deteriorates. There is a good chance that if we used Magic to build financial success, start families, and work for causes we support, we have increased the stressors in our life and are speeding that deterioration up! Even if you have never had serious health issues, with every passing year, it becomes an increased scarcity that you may want to address. We know emergency response Magic is not as good as emergency prevention Magic. Nowhere is this truer than with our health.
The Take-Away
Why am I pointing this out? Because if you are like me, your passion for Sorcery and the Occult is so strong that it creates an added draw of money, time, attention, energy, and other resources far beyond what most people experience.
Too many wealth Sorcerers focus on money when what they need is better management of time, awareness, and energy. Too many Sorcerers throw out love spells when what they need are spells to help them grow and communicate with a partner. Figure out where the real poverty lies. Focus on where you need the help and launch your spells at that.
In the last comic, Harold was ready to use aggressive love Magic to keep his girlfriend. Now that he let her go, he thinks another love spell will solve his problems, but he doesn't know where his scarcity lies. Finding partners is not where his shortage is; it's in his charm and listening skills.