Magical Intention
In chapter one, I outlined four things that make magic work, and now we’ve reached the third of these: intention.
To intend is not to want, to wish, or to hope. It is neither whimsical nor haphazard. One of the great powers of magic, and one of its great weaknesses as well, is that in order to succeed at magic, you have to know what you want.
In fact, most of us want something many times throughout the day, randomly, momentarily, or impulsively.
Sometimes our desires are conflicted. We want someone or something without intending to act on what we want. We want to have sex with a particularly desirable person, but we also want to preserve the integrity of the relationship, or avoid relationships in the workplace, or for some other reason avoid acting on that desire. We want to spend all our money on a fabulous vacation, and we also want to save up for a down payment on a home. We want to rest and put our feet up, but we also want to stick with our exercise program.
Other times, our desires are vague or confused. We want a better job, but as what? We want to write a book, or make a film, or paint a masterpiece, but we don’t know where to begin or if we are really the writer/filmmaker/painter for the task. We want a relationship, but we know our past relationships have failed and we’re not sure why. We have a sense that things could be better, but we’re not sure how.
Later in the book, we’ll talk in detail about the process of assembling a spell’s ingredients. As this occurs, the magician is naturally examining what she will do, what energies will be raised, and what results the spell is intended to achieve. This is a great time to slow down and really examine the intention behind the spell. As we plan a spell, we can consider and reconsider exactly what we’re doing, and why, and if it’s really a great idea, so that by the time we enter into the actual magic, we are (ideally) quite sure of what we want, and that we want it.
Here is how I define magical intention:
To intend is to focus fixedly and consciously on a firm desire, with determination and with absolute confidence.
Intention, then, is not just the determination to achieve a result that leads you to the decision to do magic. Rather, it is the act of mental concentration performed during magic. For example, if you do a spell to gain a lover, “intention” doesn’t mean that your life must, day in and day out, during every waking hour, be focused on gaining a lover.
Obviously, the two must be aligned—you must have a firm intention regarding your result in order to be able to concentrate effectively during your working—but that doesn’t mean that, outside the bounds of performing the spell, you have to maintain that concentration. This might actually be a relief to you if you’ve studied some New Age systems of creative visualization and manifesting desire that ask you to maintain the imagery 24/7. The advantage of doing a spell is that the concentration is bounded; it’s needed within the boundaries of the spell’s beginning and end.
Firm Desire
In order to apply your magical intention to a spell with the goal of, for example, gaining a lover—in order, in other words, to have “firm desire”—you must examine your life and understand whether or not you really, truly want a lover. Maybe you’re just horny and lonely, but your life has no room for a lover right now. If this is the case, then a lover is not your firm desire—not your true intention. Your magic will thus inevitably screw up, either by failing to bring you a lover or by bringing you one when the time is wrong, causing the kind of havoc it’s easy enough to imagine!
So, before the magic begins, self-examination is necessary to explore your firm desire. Suppose you’re doing magic for a job. Is a job your firm desire? If your rent is due and your partner is annoyed with you, the obvious answer is yes! But many of us have complicated, mixed feelings about work. Maybe a part of you would prefer to stay home with the kids. Maybe your inner teenager is rebelling against the need to work, even while your outer adult is actively job seeking.
Magician, know thyself.
“Inner work” is often considered to be entirely separate from magic. This is sometimes true—going to a self-help group, for example, is unlikely to be very magical. But here we see that in order to do magic, self-exploration has to reach past the surface desire, down into the subconscious.
Recall our earlier discussion in chapter one on thaumaturgy and theurgy. While the literal meaning of these words is “wonder working” and “god working,” psychological work is generally grouped under theurgy, since exploring the inner psyche and attuning to the higher self are not so very far apart. Now, you’re probably not going to do theurgic magic every time you think you want to do some thaumaturgy. My point is that exploring your inner self has a long magical history. And besides, it’s necessary.
Knowing your firm desire is the part of that necessity under discussion at the moment, but inner work will impact other parts of magical intention as well, notably fixed focus and absolute confidence. Self-trust is something most of us achieve only after really digging deep and exorcising inner demons of doubt. Focus, too, requires an ability to plumb the depths of consciousness and unconsciousness, undistracted by unexplored territory.
In truth, there are a lot of magicians who think that the occult is a means of avoiding purely psychological explorations. I’ve met occultists who think of themselves as “above all that.” But the most powerful magical people I know, people I’d trust to heal or help me, are people who’ve explored themselves through a variety of modalities. These are people who can comfortably discuss the current issues they’re processing, who are unashamed to reveal their struggles and eager to share their discoveries. There is a great bravery there that serves them well in their magical lives.
Fixed and Conscious Focus
To “focus fixedly and consciously” is to maintain a clear image or idea in your head for a sufficient length of time. It requires a disciplined mind. Later, we’ll learn spell techniques that make focus easier, but none of that will work without first developing proficiency in basic mind skills.
Fixed focus means that your subject matter doesn’t waver. If you’re looking to make me rich (an excellent goal), then focusing a little on me and a little on someone else isn’t ideal. If you think about making me rich and then allow your mind to wander, because chocolate is rich and there’s that cute guy named Rich, and oh yeah, where was I?—then your lack of focus will undermine your ability to accomplish anything magically.
There is such a thing as accidental magic. Some people can have a fleeting thought of such ferocity that it makes its way to the target. Some people have natural power fields around them. For example, I have a friend who was known for breaking things by walking near them. This sort of thing is kind of cool, and kind of spooky, and basically useless. It has no practical application! Without consciously choosing to do magic, you’re just throwing energies around—maybe they do what you desire and maybe they don’t. Maybe they cause harm. Learning to focus your magic consciously will, as a happy side effect, help you to avoid sending power unconsciously.
Determination and Confidence
When you focus “with determination and with absolute confidence,” you know that you can achieve your goal, that you will achieve your goal, that you already have achieved your goal. That “already have” bit is really helped along by transcending time, as we learned in the previous chapter.
Doubt has no place in a magical working. Doubt pulls your focus away from the goal and places it in the “what ifs.” When you focus with confidence, you leave no room for doubt.
Self-doubt is pernicious. You may have been reading this chapter and thinking, “I’ll never do that” or “I can’t succeed at that” or “I’m so easily distracted.” Set “never” aside. Of course you can do it! Mind skills are developed through study and practice and through recognizing that you are not an automaton.
I have to say, I often feel very distracted and distractible. My mind wanders in conversation, and sometimes I get incredibly restless when I’m working. Even while writing this, I have a game of solitaire open, and I keep flipping back and forth. How, then, can I talk about fixed focus?
The answer is simple. I get the job done, and my internal experience is not the best gauge of how well I’m doing. By this I mean the game of solitaire gets played, yes, but the book also gets written, and the proof is before you. My self-critical thoughts are a poor measure of how hard I’m actually concentrating, of how much attention my writing actual receives.
Is there imperfection? Sure. “Fixed” focus doesn’t mean “perfect, unwavering, never ever EVER distracted” focus. It means you maintain the fixed image and any distractions are dealt with quickly. Understanding that will build your confidence. Indeed, disciplining your mind has two purposes: the first, to learn how to focus, and the second, to give yourself confidence that you can focus. Both are part of magical intention.
Self-confidence comes from trusting yourself, and this calls back to our earlier discussion of inner work. If you do not trust yourself, then engaging in therapy or counseling or other work that creates self-trust will take your magic a long way.
Confidence, though, is also confidence in the magic itself.
The first part of magical confidence is overcoming the creeping inner suspicion that it’s all bullshit. Let’s face it, we’re all a product of our culture, and our culture thinks the occult is a load of crap. Even if we were raised in a home that was more open-minded, we’ve been exposed from infancy to TV, school, friends, and so on, all of which may have been absolutely wonderful but still managed to instill in us a feeling of doubt that magic can be real. When we do magic, we must overcome that doubt, or at least set it aside. (By the way, upbringing definitely matters. Second-generation magicians, including my own son, approach the art with a great deal more natural confidence than those of us who were raised to be more skeptical.)
There is nothing wrong with skepticism—it’s good not to be credulous! Investigate, examine, consider, and experiment. Don’t take things—including the things you read here—at face value. Just because I say something, that doesn’t constitute proof. But skepticism should be tempered by the possibility that the unexpected can be true.
If you doubt magic, doubt before or doubt after but do not doubt during the work. Doubt disrupts your confidence.
There are lots of techniques for setting aside doubt and distraction. Here are some ideas:
• Imagine the unwanted thoughts as pets that are bothering you when you’re working, then just shoo them out. “Go away, Fluffy!”
• Imagine a room where unwanted thoughts live. Lock them in for the duration of the magic. You may put a twenty-four-hour timer on the lock, if you like.
• Wrap unwanted thoughts in a package and seal it up, giving yourself permission to open the package later.
• Slip unwanted thoughts into a pocket. This can be doubly effective if you wear special magical garb (robes, etc.) when you do your work, because the thoughts can be in the pockets of your day-to-day clothing.
Experience is the best way to conquer the doubt born of cultural bias against magic. As you see spells work, as you feel energy and its results, your confidence in the possibilities of magic will naturally increase.
I have found that performing just one spell that doesn’t work can undermine my confidence greatly. Again, this is cultural. Because I was raised in a skeptical culture, with a predisposed inclination to believe magic doesn’t work, I can have ten successes followed by one failure (or apparent failure) and spiral into the darkest of self-doubting funks. Here I must remind myself that even the greatest doctors sometimes lose patients, even the greatest of songwriters turn out songs that don’t become hits, and even the most brilliant of scientists follow research down a dead-end path. Work can be valid at a success rate of less than 100 percent.
There have been times when I’ve found that apparent failures weren’t failures after all. One time I participated in magic to cure a disease, which then lingered for six months. I doubted myself a lot until I discovered the normal course of that illness is two years or more. Positive experience, as I said, bolsters confidence, while negative experience can undermine it. I handle failed spells by giving myself permission to fail as much as a doctor or a songwriter does, and by noting the cumulative successes I have experienced over time, which greatly outweigh the failures.
Confidence and determination also apply to the specific work you’re doing, not just to magic in general. You may have great faith in the power of magic to heal, but when presented with a request to knit a broken bone, your confidence may disappear. There is a fine line between the unlikely and the impossible, and often only you can decide which side of it a particular working lies on. If you feel you are attempting the impossible, if you look at the task ahead believing it cannot be done, then you cannot have true magical intention, because your confidence is absent.
One place where I often draw the line is distant healing for people I have not met and do not know. You see this sort of request all the time on occult- or Pagan-oriented e-lists and Facebook groups. “My Aunt Tilda is in the hospital. Please send energy.” I don’t know Aunt Tilda, I don’t know anybody who knows Aunt Tilda, and I don’t know what she looks like or exactly where she is. I have no confidence in my connection to her, so I don’t do the work.
Because you are confident in your magic, it’s important not to do anything to plant even a small seed of doubt. It is from here that the tradition arises that you must not talk about magic you have done. The “rule of silence” has various permutations. Some people say you must never talk about magical work you have done. Other variations of this rule are not to discuss it for twenty-four hours, or one moon cycle, or until you know for sure whether the magic did or did not have the desired result.
Remember that you are disciplining your thoughts to set aside doubt. As a product of your culture, as a thinking, rational being, it is natural that you will sometimes have questions, or feel weird, or wonder if the whole occult thing is some kind of delusion. Eventually you’re going to let doubt out of its locked room, or pocket, or whatever. It’s important to avoid putting energy into your magical work while that doubt is out and about.
Use your rational, analytical, doubting mind to study magic and to improve your skills. That includes reading books like this one and analyzing the work you’ve done once the rule of silence has been lifted. (I don’t hold to the “never” version of the rule for this reason.)
Emotion
Many books on magic talk about the necessity of having strong emotion. Indeed, in talking about intention, both “determination” and “firm desire” suggest a certain level of passion is needed.
Strong feeling, though, has both pluses and minuses in magic. While it certainly helps you to want something badly, it can also make you irrational. The crazy feelings that can lead a person into a bad relationship, an impulsive move, or a stupid risk can lead them into ill-advised magic as well.
With firm desire in place, it is helpful to work yourself up into a passionate emotional state while doing magic. What’s not helpful is to be so emotional that you are unable to determine whether or not magic is a good idea. Just because you still love your ex and want him back doesn’t mean it’s ethically right or magically sound to send energy toward that end. Magic done in the heat of anger can be powerful. The question is, do you want to live with the results? Anger also tends to splatter magic, and the chaos of its emotional intensity can send your energy in all directions instead of targeting it.
On the other hand, nothing is more powerfully connecting than love. When you deeply love someone, you can form a sympathetic connection easily and focus naturally. Love transcends time and space. A sympathetic object becomes secondary when someone is present with you because of the depth of your love (although it’s still good to use one). I don’t need a sympathetic object to connect to my son, my spouse, or my cat—they are with me always.
Developing Mind Skills
So, I’ve spent quite a few paragraphs telling you that you need mind skills in order to do magic effectively. How do you develop these skills? Let’s talk about three things:
• Meditation
• Grounding and centering
• Visualization and sensory exercises
Although there are certainly more mind skills to explore, these three will give you a strong basis to proceed into more advanced exercises. Then we’ll get into how to practice your mind skills.
More advanced skills, including trance, aspecting, creative visualization, and dreamwork, all depend on the skills described on the following pages.
Meditation
We have to talk about meditation first because without it, no other mind skill can be practiced effectively. Meditation is the training ground whereby you become able to do all these other, fancier things. Meditation is like a basic physical exercise program: it’s good in and of itself, but it’s also both a precursor for athletics and something every athlete continues even while performing more sophisticated physical feats.
Myths About Meditation
• It’s hard.
• It’s possible to “fail” at meditation.
• You’re bad at it.
• It can only be done one particular way.
Let’s start by exploding these myths!
All of these myths tend to come from the same place—an image you have of meditation that may not have come from a teacher at all. You may have heard about meditation, or seen it described, or picked up a cultural image somewhere or other—some TV show or comic book—and proceeded to try it yourself. You tried with the best of intentions, in order to improve yourself, to reduce stress or anxiety, to become wiser, or to deepen your occult practice. But eventually you ran into a problem: Your mind wandered incessantly, you fell asleep, you got itchy, you completely forgot you were meditating. You found lotus position impossible! You couldn’t remember your mantra! You didn’t know what you were doing.
Calm down, I’m here to help.
Why do I say that it’s not possible to fail at meditation? If all these things happen—wandering mind, itchy body, snoring—isn’t that failure?
In order to gauge the success or failure of anything, you have to understand what its purpose is. Generally, Western people are greatly misinformed about the purpose of meditation.
Things That Are Not the Purpose of Meditation
• To achieve nirvana
• To silence the chatter of the mind
• To become a meditation superhero
Here’s the problem. The cultural image of meditation tends to come from one specific school of meditation (or one of several), with a very narrow purpose. It is true that a Zen Buddhist or a Hindu yogi might sit in meditation in order to achieve enlightenment. It’s also true that such meditators practice daily, for decades, in the hope of finding moments where the mind is utterly silent. Decades of practice for moments of silence. Please keep that in mind when you feel that your efforts are going nowhere. Such meditators are the equivalent of world-class athletes, and their meditation has as little to do with yours as the exercise of Olympic medalists has to do with your get-in-shape Zumba class.
One of the purposes of meditation is to become acquainted with the way our own minds work. You may think you already know that about yourself, but in fact, we rarely have the opportunity to simply observe our own minds. Either we’re busy doing something or we’re actively engaging with our thoughts, feelings, and fantasies.
What does the voice of your inner thoughts actually sound like? Is it always the same? Is there more than one? Is it different when you’re in different emotional states? Different psychic states? What are the tricks your mind likes to play on you? What are its distraction techniques? What works and doesn’t work to overcome those distractions?
One of the things that meditation is, is an opportunity to uncover answers to these things. Your mind is your number-one magical tool, so learning how it works is pretty important. It’s fairly obvious, then, that you are not failing, and not “bad at” meditation, if what happens is you notice your distractibility.
But that’s not all there is to it. The process of meditation is the process of observing your mind doing its thing while you then continue to do what you intended to do.
The example I like to use is my own writing. As already mentioned, I’m easily distracted and I like to play computer games. When I sit at my computer to write, there’s always a game of solitaire that I could easily open or already have opened. There’s sometimes music on. There are noisy upstairs neighbors. There are, in other words, all the distractions that a restless mind could hope for.
If I judged the success or failure of any given writing session on whether or not I noticed any or all of those things, then every single session would have to be judged a failure. Instead, I judge based on something simpler and far more reasonable: whether or not I wrote.
As long as I am writing, I am successfully engaging with my own distractibility, I am being with the distractions, noticing them, and letting them go long enough to focus. In fact, I write with intention. I focus fixedly on my subject, I have a firm desire to write, I am determined, and I am confident. And the results are empowering: The book you hold in your hands is my eighth. With each book, I am more confident because I have experienced evidence of my own success. Practice and experience improve intention.
But what about the noisy neighbors? What about my itchy nose? Here’s what I do: I notice them. Perhaps I pay attention for a moment or two. Then I go back to writing. Here’s what I don’t do: sit and listen to the neighbors and think, “Damn, I really should get back to my writing,” then scratch my nose and think, “Damn, I really should get back to my writing.”
Meditation is similar. The neighbors, the nose, the cat who lands in my lap and purrs the minute I light my incense and begin … All of these get a moment of thought. All of these allow me to briefly forget that I’m meditating. Then I go back to what I was doing.
If instead I petted the cat while thinking, “See? I’m bad at meditation,” I would be succumbing to the distraction. When we think we fail, it’s often because we notice the distraction, not because we succumb to it. But the thing is, noticing and then feeling bad about our own abilities is just more distraction, and ironically it’s more likely to make us utterly succumb, at least for a few minutes.
So here’s how it works: Notice the distraction and then just set it aside. Get back to meditation. Notice and, if it so happens, succumb, and then, as soon as possible, get back to meditation. It may be that, at the end of a twenty-minute session, you had three cumulative minutes of undistracted meditation. That’s great. It’s great for a lot of reasons: One, because being fully undistracted is hard, and any achievement is worthwhile. Two, because every achievement builds on previous achievements, so next time you’re likely to get four or five minutes. Three, because you spent seventeen minutes engaging with how your mind behaves, and what that’s like, and you began the process of learning how to quiet it and move on with what you were doing.
We all lose and return to focus all the time. We do it when studying, and at work, and even when making love. What we don’t tend to do is to be with our inner thoughts and discover what that mechanism is.
As you become more skilled at meditation, you will find out that no matter how good you become at setting aside inner chatter and getting back to the meditation, you will never, or almost never, utterly silence that chatter. That’s not how the ego-mind works. To sit zazen and still the ego-mind can indeed lead to enlightenment, and the ego-mind experiences that as death—to transcend the ego is, in a way, to kill it. Thus, the ego will resist like crazy—it has a survival instinct.
Since your goal is not to transcend ego but simply to discipline yourself for the purpose of improving mind skills, a little chatter is fine. Don’t worry about it. As you learn the technique of bringing your thoughts back to the task at hand, you are learning how to focus fixedly during magic.
Preparing to Meditate
Regardless of the meditation technique you use—one of those described later in this chapter or an entirely different one—you’ll do better if you take the time to prepare.
Have the Time and Space
Many of us lead busy lives, often hectic, often overscheduled. If you squeeze your meditation in between two highly scheduled blocks of time, the thought of your impending time limit is likely to be your biggest distraction. If one ear is open for the baby, you will not be able to dive deep into the experience. If you’re a parent, get your partner’s buy-in that these twenty minutes are entirely yours, and anything that arises is his or hers to deal with. And stick to it. If you hear something, assume your partner will handle it as promised.
One of the ways that people feel like failures at meditation is by falling asleep. Often this is because they’re taking late night as their meditation time, and they’re already exhausted. Meditation directly before bedtime isn’t ideal.
The United States is a sleep-deprived culture. If you are tired all the time, then getting more rest is a more urgent need than learning how to meditate, and you should deal with that first. Meditate when you’re sufficiently rested.
Have the Privacy
It’s important, if you live with other people, to let them know you’re meditating. If you’re embarrassed by it, then you’ll feel weird about getting “caught,” and that’s a distraction. Plus, letting others in the household know what you’re doing prevents them from knocking on your door or yelling for you. Turn your phone off, lock your door, and figure out the best way to deal with your pets. (I don’t lock mine out, because when I do, they scratch at the door.)
Have the Comfort
Constricting, binding clothing has no place in meditation. Again, you’re reducing distractions—do you really want to be thinking about the belt buckle digging into your gut? For a seated or reclining meditation, figure out the position that works best for you. This may change over time as you try different techniques. If falling asleep is a problem, your position should help you avoid it. Don’t meditate in bed if that’s an issue.
And by the way, falling asleep, if you’re not sleep-deprived and it’s not bedtime, can be a way for your mind to do its work. If you fall asleep during meditation, maybe you’re just tired, but maybe there was inner work to do that was best accomplished in a dream state. It happens.
I love to meditate in a hot bath. The privacy and pet-avoidance are built-in, I’m comfortable, I’m not going to fall asleep, and the hot water is physically relaxing. I can even add herbs, oils, or salts to my bath that promote the goal of my meditation (relaxation, awakening, opening the third eye, etc.).
Meditation Techniques
One misconception about meditation is that it’s done one way and one way only: seated, preferably in lotus position, with eyes closed. A slightly more complex understanding of meditation includes that it might involve emptying the mind or it might include a mantra (a phrase to repeat). That’s about the entirety of education on the subject you can get from pop culture.
In fact, there are many different ways of meditating, many different schools and traditions of meditation, and many different things that can be meditative.
Broadly, we can categorize meditation techniques as those that draw the mind inward, into an idea, into concentration, into listening or focusing, and those that push the mind outward, inducing a trancelike state.
Inward Meditation Techniques
Inward techniques require your thoughts or feelings to engage in a specific way.
Meditate on an Idea: A magical meditation—one that relates to this chapter—might be “What is my firm desire?” To meditate on an idea might seem the same as to think about it, but in a meditative state you have access to more of your mind, at a deeper level and with better focus. Meditating on an idea might be asking yourself a question, or reciting to yourself a favorite quote and exploring it deeply. Reciting a mantra can be the exploration of an idea, as can reciting a prayer.
Meditate on an Image: In Hinduism, both mantra and mandala meditation—focusing on a phrase or an image, respectively—can be either inward or outward techniques. When the mantra is an idea, it’s inward. When the image is meant to be understood, it’s inward. Icons of deities or other symbols are often the subject of meditation.
Meditate on a Feeling: While a prayer can be the contemplation of an idea (what does it mean when I say “the Lord is One” or “the earth is our Mother”?), it can also be focused on an emotional state: devotion, love, surrender, or feelings one may dive into during prayerful meditation. Buddhist “lovingkindness” meditation is a technique entirely dedicated to creating and deepening the feeling and experience of lovingkindness—toward yourself, your family, and the world.
Listening Meditation: In this sort of meditation, you focus on listening for inner wisdom. You allow your chattering mind to be sufficiently stilled to hear a deeper voice. You actively open yourself and listen—to deity, to your own higher self, to your ancestors, to nature, or to something else. For example, the following is a description of the meditation at a Quaker meeting: the community is silent, experiencing stillness and allowing each member to listen receptively:
The practice of sitting together in silence is often called “expectant waiting.” It is a time when Friends become inwardly still and clear aside the activities of mind and body that usually fill our attention in order to create an opportunity to experience the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is not a time for “thinking,” for deliberate, intellectual exercise. It is a time for spiritual receptivity, so it is important not to clog one’s mind with its own busy activities. Nonetheless, thoughts will occur in the silence. Some thoughts will be distractions and should be set aside. (Make that shopping list later.) But some thoughts or images or feelings may arise that seem to come from a deeper source and merit attention. If you are visited by a spiritual presence, if you seem to experience perceptions that are drawn from a deeper well or are illuminated with a brighter light, then let those impressions dwell in you and be receptive to the Inward Teacher. Each person finds his or her own ways of “centering down,” or entering deep stillness during meeting. 5
Outward Meditation Techniques
The majority of meditation styles by far are outward techniques. These are techniques that use repetition, rhythm, breath, sound, or movement in order to release the mind from normal thoughts and induce a deep, relaxed, and almost mindless state.
Breathing: Concentrating on your breathing is one of the most venerable meditation techniques. Common in yoga, it is often used in the West with no association to mysticism. My mother, a social worker, teaches “square breathing” to clients as a relaxation technique. (Square breathing is so-called because it is 4 x 4: inhale-two-three-four, hold-two-three-four, exhale-two-three-four, hold-two-three-four.)
There are a wide variety of breathing techniques. They concentrate your focus on the breath while moving energy throughout the body. Breathing can be relaxing or enlivening, or both.
Repetition of a Prayer or Phrase: As mentioned previously, a mantra can be inward, focusing on the content of the phrase, or it can be outward, allowing the repetition to lull the mind. This technique works best with short or rhythmic sounds or phrases. “Om” can be used for both inward concentration—contemplating the meaning of a syllable that encompasses time, creation, and the universe—and, at the same time, outward release—allowing the resonance of the sound, the vibration, the deep breathing, and the simple repetition to alter consciousness. Vibration has measurable results on consciousness, and mystics believe that different sounds, each with its own vibrational frequency, have different effects.
Meditate on an Image: Again, this one is a repurposing of an inward technique. This time, the focus is on allowing the eye to journey through a geometric shape, away from thought or meaning. Meditation can be done by gazing at the image or by drawing or tracing it. Coloring mandalas is increasingly popular as a modern meditation technique.
Movement Meditation: An acquaintance with restless legs syndrome tells me she is able to meditate only when she walks. Walking can be simple and rhythmic, allowing your thoughts to center themselves in your body, in the physical sensation of movement, in the tempo of your steps, and in the nature of your surroundings. The walk itself can be meaningful, such as walking a labyrinth.
Mandalas and labyrinths can also be traced by hand (I’ve done this with a labyrinth about two-feet square), which makes this technique accessible to people with mobility issues. Movement doesn’t have to involve the whole body.
Yoga and dance are often movement meditations. In general, the idea is for the movement to be simple enough that it requires little thought, so you can let go into the experience, release the mind, and quiet restless thoughts.
Rhythm: There is a small amount of scientific evidence that rhythm has an effect on neurological function and can be healing. This evidence is growing as more scientists become interested in studying what mystics have known for millennia. It seems that rhythm can induce mental states that calm the mind, reduce mental “noise,” and improve focus.
Drumming or light percussion (rattles, bells, finger cymbals, etc.) can be a powerful meditative aid. In fact, lots of people get hooked on drumming to the point where it becomes their primary or only ritual or meditative technique. For meditation purposes, a drum rhythm should generally be simple—you’re going for a mild trance, not musical excellence.
Other rhythmic arts also have a meditative effect. Various textile crafts—stitching, weaving, braiding, knitting, and so on—can be used as meditation aids. They are silent but have the same repeated rhythm and physical focus as drumming, and can have a similar effect.
Sample Meditation Exercises
When I was first studying Wicca, my teacher gave me a sheet with some meditation exercises from What Witches Do: The Modern Coven Revealed by Stewart Farrar. First published in 1971, this book is an insider’s look at the training system of a Wiccan coven—an important early work that is still relevant. Training materials in the occult being in short supply in those days, my teacher had copied the exercises and created a handout for students. The exercises were a great starting point for mind training. The first two meditation exercises that follow are drawn from that handout.
Exercise 4: Beginning Meditation #1
Begin by preparing yourself and your space for meditation, as described in the “Preparing to Meditate” section earlier in this chapter. Make sure you have the ability to relax and pay attention to what you’re doing.
In a comfortable position, take several deep breaths, noticing yourself becoming relaxed and observant. Allow ideas and images to pass through your mind. Allow one idea or image to emerge, and begin to meditate on it.
For example, if you find yourself thinking of a tree … , picture a tree, analyse it, visualize its metabolism, its development, its life-span, its seasonal rhythm, its relation to its surroundings, … and instantly banish any ‘non-tree’ thought that starts to arise. … Keep this up for five minutes on the first day, lengthening the exercise by one minute a day until you reach ten minutes. 6
Exercise 5: Beginning Meditation #2
Once you’re comfortable with the first exercise, choose an image that you’ve used in that exercise, and this time, focus not on a cluster of ideas or images but on
a single thought or picture; statically, allowing neither intrusion of other thoughts nor modification of the original thought. … Gradually increase the time until you can manage a full ten minutes. 7
Grounding and Centering
Grounding and centering are a simple pair of mind skills that bring you fully present within yourself (centering) and connect you to the earth (grounding). Most people use “grounding and centering” as a single phrase, but the techniques are different, and despite the way the phrase is commonly said, I prefer to center and then ground.
Centering
Centering should be a precursor to any other inner work, ritual work, or magic. You should center as a first step before beginning any meditation. (Ironically, a meditation practice will improve your ability to center, so the two go hand in hand.)
To center:
• Begin with a deep, cleansing breath.
• Become aware of yourself: simply notice that you are present where you are.
• Locate the part of your body that feels like you. For many people, this is the solar plexus, or gut. For others, it’s the heart or the head. Find that part of you—your center.
• Begin breathing in and out from your center. Feel your breath move to and from that spot.
• Notice there are parts of you that are not in your center. There are thoughts and concerns, hopes and ideas. Parts of you are in the past and the future, at work, with your family, etc. Gently bring everything back home to the center.
There are a number of visualizations that can accomplish centering. I like to picture my uncentered self as a flock of birds, and centering is bringing all the birds home to the nest. Others like to picture a large, diffuse aura growing tighter and closer to the body.
You can spend several minutes centering, but once you are practiced at it, it will take only a few breaths to be centered. This simple technique will enhance all your subsequent work.
Grounding
Grounding is done to connect you to a greater source of power than yourself and to anchor yourself. In the next chapter, we’ll begin to explore raising power. One source of power we’ll discuss is your own body. When raising power from the body, being grounded protects your health and well-being.
When performing healing magic, grounding protects you, allowing the healing to flow through you and the sickness to flow away from you without, in either case, subtracting from your own health. When I do healing magic as part of a ritual, I will ground and center at the beginning of the ritual and then ground again right before the healing.
When you’re performing anything ritually or magically that takes you out of body—trance, astral travel, remote seeing, or the like—grounding keeps you connected to the physical and serves as a safety net, allowing you to easily return to your body and physical reality when needed. Even if you’re not doing anything that intense, grounding helps if you’re a person who feels a little woozy or out of it after ritual.
When I first started running a Wicca training group, I was not yet good at grounding myself. We would have one hell of a ritual, after which I would find myself asleep on the couch. I’d wake up and realize that my students had cleaned up after ritual for me while I was passed out. (I had great students.) Clearly, I needed better control of my energy! I concentrated on improving my grounding and conquered that particularly embarrassing problem.
There are probably dozens of methods to ground. One basic method is as follows:
• Begin with a deep, cleansing breath.
• Allow your (centered) energy to fill your body.
• Send an awareness of that energy down into the ground. If you are standing, send it through the soles of your feet. If you are seated, send it through the base of your spine.
• Connect your energy to the energy of the earth beneath you.
• Feel the energy of the earth coming back up and filling you, through the connection you have established.
• Sometimes I use a final step and send the energy out through the top of my head, creating a second energy exchange with the sky.
One common visualization for grounding is that of a tree. You imagine yourself to be a tree, rooted in the earth. The energy flowing down into the earth is your sap, and the return energy is the nourishment of soil and water. Connecting to the sky, if desired, can then connect you to the four elements as well—the fire of sunlight and the carbon monoxide/oxygen exchange of air correspond to and complement the earth and water of the soil.
In my book The Elements of Ritual, I use a grounding technique called “Pillars of the Temple,” which is designed for a group. Each person envisions themselves as a pillar, connected at the base to the earth and reaching toward the sky. The group as a whole then visualizes itself as a circle of pillars, a place of worship. This is a visualization designed, not surprisingly, for a Wiccan worship circle.
Another visualization for grounding involves the chakras. While a typical chakra meditation involves rising up from the root chakra to the crown chakra, in order to ground, start at the crown chakra and move down, through the root chakra and into the earth. Then you can work your way back up again.
Another grounding method is to become aware of your body, piece by piece. Notice that you have toes. Notice that you have feet. Notice that you have ankles. Continue up through your body, to the top of your head. You can do this technique slowly, in minute detail, or very quickly.
The body-awareness technique has lots of variations, from visualizing light in each body part, one by one, to tensing and releasing each body part. All of these techniques bring you into your body, into the physical, and therefore into a connection to the earthy part of yourself.
Grounding and centering can be accomplished with breath and sound, moving from a slow, even breath, to a deeper breath directed toward your center, to a resonant toning that moves energy from your center and down into the earth, and then up again.
As with centering, grounding can be done slowly or quickly. For a beginner, I recommend starting slowly and really feeling each step. As you become used to the process, simply knowing you’re going to do it will accomplish some of the work. A long, slow centering and then grounding can even be its own meditation session.
For an accomplished ritualist, the process can be completed in moments, as a preliminary step before magical work.
Merging
In group work, add a step that merges the group after grounding. (The step can easily be performed between centering and grounding as well.) This helps the group be fully together, united in purpose and energetically. You’ll notice that in the “Pillars of the Temple” technique, I described each individual person as a pillar, and the group as a whole becomes a temple. Similarly, in a tree meditation, the group can become a grove of trees. There need not be an elaborate visualization. You can simply extend the awareness of yourself to encompass the group, understanding that you are all present for a shared purpose.
Visualization and Sensory Exercises
Visualization is the third essential mind skill for magic, but “visualization” is a misnomer. About 80 percent of people imagine and process information visually—they “picture” things in their “mind’s eye.” But 20 percent is a very large minority of people who are excluded by the phrase.
The grounding and centering steps in the previous section gave visualizations—picture yourself as a tree, picture yourself full of light, and so on. But for you, it may not be visual, or there may be visual components but it may not be primarily visual.
Any of the senses may be a part of your imagination. You may hear, smell, or taste in your mind’s eye, or you may have a cognitive imagination—you just know.
I happen to be pretty weak visually. I see images sometimes, but my strongest sense-imagery is body sensation, and picturing words. So if you say “water,” I might see “WATER” spelled out in my mind’s eye, while I feel water: I become aware of the saliva in my mouth, the fluid in my eyes, and so on. A meditation practice and years of experience have allowed me to become familiar with how I imagine, and what does and does not work for me, so that I no longer think of myself as an imaginative failure—I’m just different.
Visualization and sensory exercises give you a chance to explore exactly what images your mind is best at using, while developing strong imaginative skills. In magic, you must “picture” (whether visually or otherwise) your target or goal, so these skills are essential. Just as exercise at the gym makes your body stronger, these exercises will make your ability to create imaginative imagery stronger.
Perform these exercises with the same preparation you give to meditation—have privacy, have time, and be comfortable.
1. Close your eyes.
2. Center yourself.
3. Imagine a rose. See it clearly in your mind. Imagine the nuances of the color and its exact shade.
4. Picture the texture of the petals, soft, as if you are rubbing them between your fingers.
5. Inhale and experience the scent of the rose.
6. Imagine touching the thorns, and feel the prick of pain.
7. Turn the rose around so that you see it from all sides.
8. Let the image fade slowly before opening your eyes.
This exercise can be repeated with any number of items that can be seen and touched and can inspire other senses. Imagine foil and hear it crinkle. Imagine a barbeque and feel the heat waves coming off it. Continue to repeat this exercise regularly until you feel you can reliably create an image (or a sensory experience) as needed.
The Mind’s Eye exercise places the image in your mind. The next task is to take the image out of your mind and place it before you. In other words, stop acting like you can see the image and actually see (and feel, taste, smell) it.
The Spiral Dance by Starhawk is the seminal work on its particular style of Witchcraft—freeform, intuitive, and politically conscious. If you came into the practice of Witchcraft any time between 1979 and 1990, you are virtually guaranteed to have read it. The Spiral Dance remains an excellent and essential book on the practice of Witchcraft. The following exercise comes from its pages. I could give you my own version of it, but this one is excellent and cannot be improved upon. Starhawk’s book doesn’t say if this exercise should be done with eyes open or closed. I recommend you close your eyes. As always, begin by centering yourself.
Visualize an apple. Hold it in your hands; turn it around; feel it. Feel the shape, the size, the weight, the texture. Notice the color, the reflection of light on its skin. Bring it up to your nose and smell it. Bite into it, taste it; hear the crunch as your teeth sink in. Eat the apple; feel it slide down your throat. See it grow smaller. When you have eaten it down to the core, let it disappear.
Repeat with other foods. Ice cream cones are also excellent subjects. 8
This exercise places the image directly before you. You are holding the apple, not imagining that you hold it. See it in your hand, not in a hand that you picture in your mind.
In Wicca and many other magical traditions, a circle is created as ritual space. The circle, a universal symbol of wholeness and infinity (as well as a bunch of other things), is used in many different ritual traditions, and, as discussed in chapter three, ritual space offers advantages to the magician. So our next exercise will take the visualization skills you’re learning and apply them to this practical end.
In Exercise 6, the imagery was in your mind’s eye. In Exercise 7, you transcended that, and placed the image before you; the apple was in your actual hand, and you swallowed it down your actual throat.
In this exercise, you’re going to keep your eyes open and visualize/sense on top of what you see.
1. Stand in a space you will use for magic. Hold a wand or athame (ritual knife) if you have one.
2. Center yourself.
3. Starting in the east,9 point your magical tool (or your index finger) toward the ground.
4. Moving clockwise, slowly draw a circle around yourself.
5. As you do so, picture a bright blue electric light coming from the tip of your magical tool/finger and reaching the floor.
6. Hear the crackling, electric sound of the light.
7. Smell the ozone-like burning.
8. Feel tingling in your hands.
9. See the blue coming from your tool/finger and, as it reaches the floor, remaining there, so that when you’re done, you’re standing in the center of a circle of blue crackling light.
10. When you’ve circled all the way around and you’re back in the east, draw the light back into your tool or finger—the circle remains on the floor.
11. Hold the image of the circle.
12. Now return to the east and draw the circle back up into your tool/finger, again moving around clockwise.
13. When the circle is fully lifted, allow all sensations to return to normal. Your skin isn’t tingling. There is no electrical odor or sound.
14. Take a deep breath and release it. You’re finished.
The three exercises in this section will help you develop sensory ability in your mind’s eye, in your ability to imagine the “real” with eyes closed, and, finally, in your ability to imagine the real with eyes open, while actually doing something. As you become skilled at these, you will find that working magic becomes easier and easier. In addition, these exercises will familiarize you with your own imaginative strengths and weaknesses. Did light sparkle and crackle but have no odor? Practice your olfactory imagination, but also know that scent may not be your strength.
Using Triggers
You and I are no different than Pavlov’s dogs. We respond to conditioning, and, because we are intelligent, we can use that to our advantage.
There are many things traditionally associated with magic, including:
• Incense
• Candlelight
• Magical robes and jewelry
• Magical tools (wand, blade, staff, etc.)
We’re going to talk about these things later in detail—what they mean, why they work, and so on. For now, though, let’s talk about how their use can enhance your ability to alter your state of consciousness.
The mind responds quickly to repetitive stimuli. Play the same music every time you meditate and you’ll find that after a while, simply turning on the music will begin to place you in a meditative state. So use that knowledge, and select music that works for you.
The same is true for incense. I always burn incense when I meditate, and so, when I smell it burning, I am already starting my journey away from ordinary consciousness.
The same is true for anything on this list. A magical ring or bracelet that is worn only when magical work, meditation, or mind exercises are being done can become a trigger that is effective and reliable.
I was raised in a Jewish family, so I had no traditional association in my mind with incense until I started practicing Wicca. When I was about twenty-two, a boyfriend’s close relative died, and I experienced Catholic church for the first time when I attended the funeral. The entire situation was very tense—in addition to the normal sorrow associated with a funeral, family secrets had come out while this relative was on his death bed, and everyone was on pins and needles.
Suddenly I was calm and relaxed. After a few minutes, I realized it was the church incense—the same Three Kings blend the High Priestess of my coven favored. The scent soothed and opened me even without my realizing it.
You may want to set a particular incense aside that means “magic” and/or one that means “meditation.” That way, you can use other incenses for other purposes, which we’ll discuss in the next chapter. I’ve seen ritualists swap out one incense for another for a spell, or create a blend.
As an example, suppose your go-to incense for altering consciousness is myrrh. If you choose to burn rose—for a love spell, say—you can start your ritual with myrrh and then switch to rose, or you can create a rose and myrrh blend especially for the occasion and burn it throughout.
Scent is an especially powerful inductive influence, but the same principle applies to music, garb, or a recited phrase.
Using Focal Objects
A focal object is something—a physical object—that you focus on when meditating, when doing divination, when practicing other mind skills—trance, visualization, active imagination, or astral travel, to name a few—or when doing magic.
When talking about meditation earlier in this chapter, we defined “inward” and “outward” forms of meditation—concentrating the focus in, onto the subject of meditation, or out, pushing the mind out and away. Focal objects have the same two possible effects.
Focal Objects to Draw the Attention In
• Idols or religious icons
• Tarot cards
• Astrological charts
• Tree of Life
• Photographs
• Mementos
• Written text—a prayer, koan, or affirmation, for example.
With these, and similar objects, you are focusing your attention and thoughts on what they are, what they represent, what feelings and thoughts they create within you, what wisdom they have to offer, or what memories or imagery they inspire.
Focal Objects to Push the Mind Out
• Candles and other sources of fire
• Crystals
• A black mirror
• A bowl of water
• Clouds
These types of objects allow you to “space out.” We’ve almost all had the experience of gazing into a fire and finding ourselves lost. This whole category of focal objects helps engender that experience.
Some people are exceptionally good at mind skills that require tuning out from the conscious mind in this way. Scrying, for example, is gazing into a crystal, mirror, or water and allowing the eyes to unfocus, seeing peripheral images or visions. Other people are better at focusing in and find that visions arise only when the mind is busy, as in studying a tarot card or tracing a path along the Tree of Life.
In chapter two, we talked about sympathetic objects. A sympathetic object can serve double duty as a focal object, allowing you to form a magical connection while at the same time focusing the mind.
A focal object can also be a source of power. In the next chapter, we’ll dive into raising power, and discover what sorts of objects can help to raise power. Objects such as crystals can be sources of power as well as focal objects, again serving a dual purpose.
5. “Traditional Quaker Worship,” Quaker Information Center, www.quakerinfo.org/quakerism/worship.
6. Stewart Farrar, What Witches Do: The Modern Coven Revealed (Custer, WA: Phoenix Publishing, 1989), 51.
7. Ibid.
8. Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1979), 50.
9. I have a compass app on my phone—it’s invaluable!