Indicators of Ritual Success: ΔT & ΔC
Success is thy proof: argue not; convert not; talk not over much!
The Book of the Law
Chapter 3, Verse 42
One of the most common questions I receive is “How do you know a ritual worked?” Crowley’s The Book of the Law has what to me is the most obvious answer. If you get the results you intended, the ritual worked. If you don’t get the results you wanted, the rituals failed.
That’s all well and good in the long run, but it doesn’t do you much good right now. Let’s say you do a ritual to get $50 by the end of the week and sure enough, you get the money. But isn’t it possible that you would have received the money if you had done nothing? The ritual and the supposed result may just be chance and not linked.
In my previous blog post I discussed hypnosis. You may wonder how a hypnotist knows if you’re hypnotized. There are several ways, including giving certain tests called “convincers” or the hypnotist may depend upon observing certain physiological changes in the person being hypnotized. Likewise, to me it has always seemed like there should be some sort of convincer that the ritual you have performed has been a success.
I have found to indicators of ritual success. I call them Delta T and Delta C.
ΔT
Delta T means a temperature-based change. There are two basic forms of this. The first is ΔTi or “Delta T Increase.” When you experience ΔTie during a ritual, it becomes hotter. A typical example of this is when you perform a ritual on a cold day it becomes quite hot. As soon as the ritual is over you notice that it is cold again. It’s opposite is ΔTd or “Delta T Decrease.” When you experience ΔTd the temperature becomes quite cold during the ritual.
In my experience ΔTi is much more common than ΔTd, but when you experience ΔTd the ritual was even more effective.
ΔC
Delta C means a chronological or time-based change. There are two basic forms of this. The first is ΔCe or “Delta C Extension.” When you experience ΔCe during a ritual, time seems to extend. A typical example of this is that you think a ritual lasted over an hour when it really only lasted 20 minutes. It’s opposite is ΔCc or “Delta C Contraction.” When you experience ΔCc you think that a ritual was very short and may have lasted 15 minutes or less when, in reality, it lasted an hour or more.
In my experience ΔCe and ΔCc occur about equally.
Have you had either of these delta experiences during rituals?
What signs of a ritual’s success during the ritual have you experienced?
Most of the time I complain about my weak success, Mr. Kraig. I did a curse with the intention of causing havoc and mayhem with someone’s relationship, but the result was less than havoc or mayhem. It was to cause someone a little grief and humility.
So yes “Success is thy proof”. Still I rant about the weak weak weaaak results I get, do you have any ideas on increasing strength?
Most definitely experienced ΔCc. An all night ritual event was experienced as if it had transpired during the course of one or two hours.
I’ve never experienced either of these. For me, it’s a strange sense of euphoria and a startling synchronicity shortly after the ritual. I’ve posted more about it on my blog.
I’ve experienced DeltaTi many times when channeling or doing involved spirit work. DeltaC is not something I have ever taken as confirmation that a rite was working,though. I’ll have to amend my perception to notice that more.
Patrick Dunn linked to your post. Apparently, you often provide food for thought. I’ll try to visit more often!
why a curse?
I can’t say that I’ve noticed much in the way of Delta-T in my own work, but Delta-C shows up pretty reliably especially with certain types of magick. When working with zodiacal magick I’ve found that one of the most common effects is a distinct feeling of cold over the center of the altar, like the cold spots that are said to accompany spirits. It’s not as noticeable in my experience with planets or elements, though.
Has anyone else here ever tried experimenting with using an EMF detector during evocations? My magical working group has tried that a few times over the course of this last year and the detector often spikes moments after wrapping up the conjuration. I published those results on my blog here. The sample size is pretty small so far, but from the initial data it seems like something interesting could be going on. At the very least, the results are promising enough to be worth pursuing further.
One piece of advice I will give, though, is that even though these “convincers” are nice to have it’s also important not to become too obsessed with their intensity. When I do successful magick I generally get a noticeable effect, but there doesn’t seem to be much correlation between how strong or intense that initial effect is and the probability shift produced toward accomplishing the end result. Just because you get a huge cold spot or a big EMF spike on a particular ritual doesn’t necessarily indicate that it’s much more likely to succeed – at least, not as far as I’ve been able to work out from the experimental data that I’ve collected.
I tend to look towards the results of the magickal working rather than the indicators. The problem with indicators is that they may just be indicating something else. For instance, you may be doing a healing ritual and you may experience an increase in temperature. If you based much off of this indicator you would expect that your efforts are working. What about if an entity happened to show up and the temperature change was entirely because of the entity and you weren’t actually successful.
On the other hand, it might be useful to note this and its dependence on the type of ritual or working to better understand the way that magick works. For example, in my experience if a single room in the house is hot and we haven’t been doing any kind of magick, it more than likely means that there’s a serious problem with the A/C or there’s an entity in the house. This is something I noticed a long time ago and has proved to be a very useful tool.