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Underground > Temple >

Dealing with failure

22:26 / 11.05.06

While I've been reading about magic for about a year, I've only started actually trying stuff only some time ago - and I have to say that I feel a bit disappointed with the results.

I did have one particularly startling coincidence following a sigil (one of those that fall into the "no, this can't be a coincidence" category), even though it didn't yield the fully expected results. However, most of the stuff I've been doing has basically not been working.

I do understand that magic takes practice, patience and perseverance. On the other hand, sometimes I can't help but wonder if I'm wasting my time experimenting around with it.

Yet, it seems to be a very important aspect to the life of the people who frequent the Temple - and when people whose writing has be so meaningful to me, such as Grant Morrison and Scott Treleaven, say that magic is real, that its out there and that you just need to reach out to let it into your life, I find it hard to dismiss chaos magic as mere superstition.

Any piece of advice on how to deal with failure in one's first magical experiments?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

22:38 / 11.05.06

I think you might profit from trying another tack. So sigils didn't work for ya, so what? Plenty of other methods to use.

Maybe you could try adopting a basic daily practice and see where it takes you. Try performing the LBRP every day--it won't take you long to learn, and once you have it down you're only looking at a commitment of 15 minutes a day. Keep a diary of your daily life and your dreams. See what changes you notice.

22:53 / 11.05.06

Patience young paduan... I mean, what Mordant said. Try different techniques, persevere, play to your strengths to develop your own style. Don't lose hope.
Let your style evolve naturally out of yourself I reckon, your path or practice should be as personal as your taste, and it's always easier to learn things that you're interested in.

22:58 / 11.05.06

even though it didn't yield the fully expected results.

I almost never does AFAIK, there's always something unexpected. Otherwise it wouldn't be magic, it would be mundane.

trouser the trouserian

04:48 / 12.05.06

article may be of interest:

rites that go wrong

...it's extremely difficult to judge magical results entirely in terms of success and failure. My experiences with doing magical sigils for example, have shown me that quite often, the results don't manifest until I've thought "well bugger this, that was a waste of time" - and then they pop up. Some magical approaches do in fact recommend that you work occasionally for a negative result - and the opposite will come along in due course. Any magical act should be instructive, especially when it doesn't go the way you planned.

05:44 / 12.05.06

The other thing is, learn from it. Question your experiences and work over your preconceptions with a fine tooth comb. If you aren't experiencing success, then possibly the methodology is wrong? Possibly what you've been told is bullshit? Or works for those people and not for you? I think this is a problem with learning from books and textual sources, in that we look up to perceived autority figures, on whom we've projected all sorts of stuff, and disregard our own experience.

For the record, I had exactly the same experience as you. It didn't cause me to give up - I just kept up my investigations and found another "way in".

A favourite quote:

Most of us in this part of the world have been educated or conditioned to believe accept that what is in books is true. The key here is the key to all yoga and all magick. Think for yourself. I have been actively involved in practising various esoteric exercises for the past 20 years. One thing it has taught me is that the reality of an experience can differ considerably from what it written about it.

06:36 / 13.05.06

How about this, seeing as you mentioned Morrision and Scott Treleaven? It seems to me that in the reading and thinking about most successful magicans that what is really important is actually creativity. The magick serves as an adjunct to this, not the other way around. Writing brillant comics and fanzines and getting your magick and life ensnared between the lines. Painting sigils on yourself and jumping off bridges etc....

I'd think this is true for most successful magicans I can think - look at Spare's creative output, or Crowley or Mathers... it's also apparent in writers who aren't "artistic" as such - i.e. Pete Carroll - the best bits in his books, the real magick to me - is in the physics because this is where the creativity lies. Phil Hine also.

This is one of the paradoxes of the study of ceremonial magick for me, in that basically one is studying "dead forms" - the residue of others creative processes. Now, I think there's room for creativity here - scholarship can certainly aid creativity and fuel the imagination. I suppose the real magick here comes when one can get it out of the glass museum box and make it practical and applicable to ones own life - "write one's own qabalah". Interested to hear anyone else's comments on this.

So, this might not be much practical help, but I'm just pointing out some of the limitations of the magic as a tool approach (the limitations of sigils *yawn*) Don't think of it as "making something work", see the whole process - committing yourself to a creative adventure.

16:16 / 13.05.06

takes experience. don't worry about initial failures. takes inner purification and consecration to one's purpose. purification in crowley's sense of the elimination of all extraneous to the will.

16:38 / 13.05.06

to achieve any result you need unbending intent. "I will not accept failure!" should be your rallying cry to your lower selves.