Since I wrote about not confusing goal setting with accomplishments, I thought I might follow up with a similar though. Unless the stated goal of your working is the production of a paranormal event, do not mistake magical effects for accomplishments.
Amazing things can happen when you do magic. I have seen spirits materialize visably in smoke, and even in the air itself. We may clairvoyant sight, beatific visions, or moments of sheer ecstasis. I have witnessed phyisical levitations and movement of objects, the spontanous breaking of glass, strange electrical phenomina, even the momentary posession of passers by. If your ritual has a specific practical real world outcome, you must not mistake a magical or paranormal phenomina for a sign of success. Often these things happen because your magic is NOT aimed properly with a clear path for success! Your feeling of euphoria or the visable appearance of King Ghob does not have direct bearing on job finding, weight loss, seduction, romance, muscle building, or increase of income.
Totally agreed. Joseph Lisiewski and his buddies seem to be the biggest offenders on this one. Over a lot of years I’ve found little to no corellation between paranormal effects during a ritual and whether or not the ritual accomplishes its objective.
Look at it this way – if the total probability shift you plus whatever you’re conjuring can produce is X and the shift required to produce a particular paranormal effect during your ritual is Y there are really only two logical possibilities. If the paranormal effect is independent from the ritual’s goal the effect on the goal remains X. But if the paranormal effect and the ritual’s goal behave like the same interconnected event, the total shift applied to the goal can’t be any higher than X – Y.
Lisiewski’s book claims that what you really get is X + Y or maybe just Y as a final shift applied to your goal, even though none of the mechanisms he proposes could explain that result and I know of no magicians for whom magick works that way.
Totally agreed too. When doing thaumaturgy (as opposed to theurgy) I’ve barely noticed paranormal stuff, nonetheless my magic has (almost) always worked wonderfuly, and I’m almost as fundamentalist as Lisiewski (though his followers seem to be too much oriented to seeing bizarre things and fighting over one another about who follows the grimoires perfectly to the letter, a shame, considering that if there are many grimoires there are AT LEAST as many different ways of doing magic…)
Blessings,
Senko