Magick and
Communication Skills

Emily Carlin

What do communication skills have to do with magick? Quite a lot, in my experience. The way I see it, magick is about understanding exactly what you want to do with your magick and then communicating that intent to the universe in order to manifest it. How can you expect to properly form a spell to get what you want if you cannot clearly articulate what you want? Being able to specify precisely what you desire to the universe is critical to the success of any magickal working.

The first question to ask yourself before any magickal working is: What is my intent? What is it that you want your magick to accomplish? Most, if not all, magickal acts have specific goals, such as “help heal my brother’s broken arm,” “help me find a better job,” or “protect me from gossip.” These goals are generally stated during the course of the magickal working, whether the statement of intent is verbalized, converted into a sigil, visualized, written on a piece of paper and burned, or expressed using some other method. How well those goals are articulated can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of the magick being done. Yes, some may say that the universe will take care of any ambiguity in your intent, but why put so much effort into your magickal act and then let it fizzle into “whatever the gods will”? The clarity and deliberateness of your intent are what separate magick from prayer. By more clearly understanding and articulating your true intent, you take greater control over your magick and increase its potency.

Most, if not all, magickal acts have specific goals, such as “help heal my brother’s broken arm,” “help me find a better job,” or “protect me from gossip.” How well those goals are articulated can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of the magick being done.

Before you can effectively communicate your magickal intent, you first need to better understand what that intent really is. Let’s look at one of the previous examples: “help heal my brother’s broken arm.” It seems pretty simple at first glance, but let’s look a bit deeper. Why do you want to heal the arm, and how? Is your brother in pain and
you want to minimize his suffering even if that slows down the healing? Is he being forced to take time off from work that he can’t afford and thus you want to speed his healing even if it makes the process more painful? Are there other medical conditions, like a compromised immune system, being affected by the injury that need to be safeguarded? Are there potential complications you’re trying to help him avoid? Even something as outwardly straightforward as healing an injury can have numerous complexities when you look at the totality of the circumstances.

Magickal goals like “protect me from gossip” are even more complex. In that type of situation you need to look at the objective facts of the situation, identify your own motivations, and attempt to surmise the motivations of the other people involved in order to fully explore and clarify your own intent. Let’s say that the objective facts of the situation are that you work in a small office and one of your coworkers has a bad habit of saying nasty things about people behind their backs. This could create a lot of different, and potentially conflicting, motivations for doing a protection spell. You might be concerned about being made to look bad in front of your boss or peers, you might be worried about your work environment becoming too stressful, and you might want to punish the gossiper for saying bad things about people.

There are a lot of different magickal acts that can address those motives (protections, bindings, glamours, etc.). How you decide to go about accomplishing your goals should, as much as is feasible, take into account the motivations of the gossiper. You can never really know what someone else is thinking, but thoughtful observation and perhaps an outside opinion or two should give you some insight. Is the person envious of others, seeking attention, looking to make themselves look better by putting others down, or perhaps dealing with pain and stress in an unhealthy way? In this situation your real intent may be to protect your own reputation and working relationships by making your positive contributions outshine any negative gossip headed your way. Alternatively, your real intent might be to improve the general atmosphere in the office by binding the gossiper against doing harm while simultaneously recognizing their positive efforts in order to address their envy and insecurities. By better understanding what you want and how you want to get it, you are more likely to do magick that will actually accomplish those specific goals.

One of the easiest ways to better understand your intent is to write down your immediate goal and then ask yourself why you want it. Write down your answer and then once again ask yourself why? Do this until you have as complete a picture of the circumstances and your own motivations as possible. If your goal is to find a better job, ask why you want that. Your answer might be something like, “I need a higher salary and better hours.” Why do you want that? “To be able to afford to go out on occasion and not be so tired when I get home.” Why do you want those things? “I want to be able to have fun and enjoy my time off. I want to feel better about my life.” You’ll know you’ve dug deep enough into your intent when all of the answers to why? are basic physical and emotional needs: food, shelter, security, emotional well-being, etc. In asking why, we’ve clarified what constitutes “a better job.” In this case, the goal really is to find a job that pays a salary high enough to afford a more comfortable lifestyle that isn’t as mentally or physically draining and that allows for a more positive general outlook. Magick tends to follow the path of least resistance to a goal, so if we just do a spell for a “better” job, we might get something that pays better but is more stressful and has worse hours,
or perhaps something with a flexible schedule and low stress but that barely pays the bills. By doing a magickal working that specifically addresses the needs you’re trying to fulfill, you’re a lot more likely to get the end result you want than if you do a more vague working.

Now that you better understand what you really want your magick to accomplish, you need to communicate that intent to the universe in order to manifest it. For any preplanned or complex working, I recommend writing a formal statement of intent that explicitly states what you want, why you want it, and how you want to get it.

Now that you better understand what you really want your magick to accomplish, you need to communicate that intent to the universe in order to manifest it. For any preplanned or complex working, I recommend writing a formal statement of intent that explicitly states what you want, why you want it, and how you want to get it. Take your time with this. Write a draft and put it away for a few days, then come back to it and revise it. Keep revising until you are satisfied that it fully articulates the totality of your intent. If you have other people you work with and are comfortable with them reading your statement of intent, then have them read it and reflect back to you what they think you intend. This is a great way of making sure that what you wrote really makes sense, rather than just having it make sense inside your own head. The more important your working is, the more valuable outside feedback can be. If you don’t have a local community you’re comfortable working with, there are always online communities, particularly on Facebook and Tumblr, where you can ask people for their input. Once you are satisfied that what you’ve written down makes sense, you can implement it in your working.

There are many ways to incorporate your complete statement of intent into a working. For some workings, particularly elaborate rituals, it may be appropriate to read your statement of intent aloud as part of the working. For other types of magick, it may be appropriate to read your statement of intent silently while visualizing your goal and putting your energy into it, perhaps then burning the written statement to release the energy you’ve put into it. A popular way of shortening an elaborate statement of intent is to convert it into a sigil. (There are many works both in print and online that go into making sigils in depth, so I won’t cover that here. I recommend Practical Sigil Magic by Frater U∴D∴ .) Once you have a sigil of your intent, you can carve it into a candle, stitch it on a bag, draw it on paper, etc., and use it to empower a spell or working. You can also meditate on your statement of intent in order to create a symbol, set of movements, combination of herbs, etc., that represents your intent. Use your creativity and imagination to find the simplification that feels right to you, then charge it with the power of your full intent and do your working.

Having a complete statement of intent, even if it’s only for your own understanding, is particularly important for any working involving external entities. Anyone who’s ever worked with ancestors, fae, Goetics, spirits, or other metaphysical entities knows that some of them will go out of their way to follow the exact letter of what you’ve asked of them while purposely subverting your intent—often because they think it’s hilarious. Think of the famous “Monkey’s Paw” story, where you make a wish and the paw will grant it, but in the most horrible way possible. Working with external entities can feel a lot like that sometimes, though usually less deliberate malevolence is involved. Taking the time and trouble to fully outline not only what you want but also how you want to get it can save you a lot of cleanup later. There are few times when clearly communicating your intent is more important than when working with sentient metaphysical beings.

Of course, there isn’t always time to write a full statement of intent. When you’re walking out to your car late at night in a dark, deserted parking garage, you don’t really have time to analyze why you want to do a protection spell. At times like this, your mind shouting “SAFETY!” at the top of its noncorporeal lungs will do the trick just fine. The purpose of writing a full statement of intent is to maximize the effectiveness of your magick. Most spur-of-the-moment magick is done in reaction to what’s happening around you while it’s happening. Sure, your knee-jerk reaction is going to be less fully formed and thought out than something more measured, but that’s okay. When you need to do spur-of-the-moment magick, do what you feel you need to do and then do a more fully thought-out damage-control working later if you need to. On the plus side, the more often you take the time to fully explore your intent, the more your mind will be trained to think along those lines and the more accurate your in-the-moment thoughts are likely to be. Taking the time to be truly clear about your intent when possible will benefit all of your magickal workings.

Your words and the intent behind them have the power to manifest your will in the world. By deliberately exploring not only your immediate goals but also the underlying needs that are addressed by those goals and the methods by which you’d like to see those goals manifested, you can better understand what you truly want your magick to do. That understanding then allows you to more accurately convey your true intent in your workings. The extra care you put into the thoughts, words, and actions that communicate your intent to the universe allows your magick to manifest your intent more effectively, giving you the results you truly want.

Emily Carlin is an eclectic Witch, writer, teacher, mediator, and ritual presenter based in Seattle. She currently teaches one-on-one online and at in-person events on the West Coast. For more information and links to her blogs, go to http://about.me/ecarlin.

Illustrator: Kathleen Edwards

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