Last week I was talking with a writer who has spent a lot of time with Pagans, and some of his closest friends are Pagans, but he is not a Pagan himself. We got to talking about people who work magic, and his main question was, “If these witches and magicians are so great, how come they can’t pay their rent? How come they’re in such poor health? How come they can’t seem to get their lives together?”

Now, almost all of the Pagan and Wiccan authors I work with are successful in both realms – magical and mundane. They own houses, support their families, and don’t seem to be any worse off than the average Joe. Some of them have used their talents to spur themselves to go running every day, to establish non-profit organizations, to go to law school, to get a master’s degree, to own a bookstore, and other shining accomplishments. But this writer did hit on a good point – if we look around, we can also see people with real troubles in our community. The ones who drift aimlessly from job to job, or even from couch to couch. The ones who can’t quit smoking or lose weight when they try. Just look at the preeminent magician of the early 20th century, Aleister Crowley – for all of his magical and spiritual prowess, he was a slave to his heroin habit.

Focus and will are two of the most important skills of a witch, so how is it that some witches don’t have the same focus and will when it comes to their mundane life? Maybe they see these mundane things as secondary to their spirituality. In other words, they may have done a lot of work on the inner planes that allows them to be fully present in their lives, so they are “OK” with the outer trappings of their life, no matter how poor that may look to us on the outside. They may be so involved in enriching their inner life that bettering their mundane life is just not a priority.

Obviously there are many shades of gray to this, so I’ll put the question to you. How much magical work do you put into your mundane life – for example, eating better, quitting smoking, finding a better job, planning a career path, getting better grades, getting together rent or mortgage money, supporting your family? Are there areas you’d like to work on more? How much of your magical work is solely aimed at spiritual development and inner transformation and has no concrete outcome in the mundane world, other than making you feel better about your life circumstances? Are there some parts of your life that you’ll “tamper with” and other parts you won’t? (For example, in my own experience I’ve done magical work for concrete things like jobs, money, finding an apartment and healing but I’ve never done magical work for things harder to measure, such as enhancing my relationships or creativity.)

Please take a moment to share your thoughts – either here on the blog, or on our Facebook page. Better yet, if you have specific examples of using magic to improve your mundane situation, please share!

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Written by Elysia
Elysia is the Senior Acquisitions Editor for Witchcraft, Wicca, Pagan, and magickal books at Llewellyn. She has been with Llewellyn since 2005 and a fan for much longer. ...