So Where’s All the Advanced Stuff?

Okay. You’ve learned the basic rituals. You know the Tree of Life and its correspondences. You know which herbs to use in spells for any reason. You’ve got the basics down. It’s quite possible that you have a question that bothers so many people. Where is all the advanced stuff? If you’re looking for the answer to that question, you’ve probably already looked everywhere. In books, on the internet. Everywhere.

There’s a story I remember about Aleister Crowley. I don’t remember where I read it or the exact details, but it goes something like this:

They asked me for the secrets of magick, so I told them.

“But we want the real secrets of magick,” they said. So I told them.

“But we want the real, ultimate secrets of magick.” So I told them.

“Be we want the deepest, most powerful secrets of magick.”

“Oh, you want those?” I replied. “That will cost you a thousand British Pounds Sterling.”

They paid me and I told them the secret:

“There’s a sucker born every minute!”

Why Magick?

I once got into an online debate with a person who insisted that the “cool” thing about chaos magick was that you didn’t have to be successful. I wrote back saying, “You do realize that chaos magick was originally called ‘results magic,’ don’t you?” He never responded. So I have to disagree with that person. Of course the purpose of magick is to achieve your goals. If not, why do it?

The thing is, we have many different goals. On one level the goal can be spiritual in nature. We can do magick to become more spiritual and more in tune with the Divine. We can also use magick for practical things, from improving finances and health to overcoming limitations. If we have a goal in any area of life, magick can be used to help us achieve it.

Certain types of magick are binary in nature. That is, either the magick works or it doesn’t. An example of this would be love magick. If you got a new boyfriend or girlfriend after doing magick for that purpose, the magick worked. If you didn’t get a new love interest, the magick didn’t work and you should find out why.

Other forms of magick have success that can judged along a continuum. Money magick can be viewed that way. If you do magick to get $10,000 dollars, but you only get $3,000, that’s not a total failure, but it certainly isn’t a complete success. If you get $9500 dollars it’s not a 100% success, but it’s almost there and many magicians would say you succeeded fairly well.

Why Didn’t You Succeed?

This is a big question in magick. Can you go back through your spell work or ritual design and discover what went wrong? Or perhaps you don’t have the skills yet and need more practice. With the knowledge of what to do and the skills to do it there is no reason why you can’t be successful.

In this discussion of magick I have discussed different types of magick that are rated successful either as binaries or along a continuum. I’ve described that you need the knowledge and skill to perform the magick. Nowhere have I described the need for advanced rituals!

If you can do magick to achieve all of your goals, why would you need more advanced rituals and spells? I have often heard people say they want things that are more advanced that what can be found in books like:

Practical Sigil Magic,
Brain Magick,
Planetary Magick,
Geomancy in Theory & Practice,
Modern Magick,
Hands-On Chaos Magic,
Postmodern Magic,
High Magic,
Northern Mysteries & Magick,
Planetary Spells & Rituals,
Foundations of Magic,
Practical Magic for Beginners,
Charms, Spells & Formulas,
Practical Candleburning Rituals,
and many more.

However, I have yet to meet anyone who has successfully worked all of the magick in all of these books.

So why are people looking for more advanced magick? There are some people who are looking for new concepts, more complex and complete information, and more magickal techniques. Perhaps they’re looking for ancient, lost grimoires for historical information. In my experience, however, most people who are looking for “advanced techniques” are actually looking for a movie magic wand. You know, the type of wand that when you wave it, sparkles flow from its tip and the magick instantly and fully occurs. They want the type of wand Tinkerbell or Harry Potter waves. Unfortunately, those are fictional wands. They’re not real.

Why do they want the fiction? Because the magick they’ve attempted hasn’t worked. Perhaps, they think, with a real magic wand—the “advanced techniques”—their magick will be a success.

I’m sorry. It won’t.

The books that are out there now, such as the ones above, can give you everything needed to be a successful magician. But in order to succeed at magick you must do one thing:

Do the work.

It’s not as romantic as finding an “advanced technique” where all you have to do is mumble some words and servitors from another dimension will appear and bring you gold, gems, and sex partners, but in order to accomplish magick, what you need to do is:

Do the work.

Many of the books above have specific methods you can use to be successful if you:

Do the work.

And then, when you’re actually ready to find the book with advanced techniques that you need, you’ll find it. In the mean time:

Do the work.