chapter one
What is Instant Magick?
Instant magick is a technique to create change in your life in the simplest way possible. Modern mystics define magick as creating change in your reality with the power of your will. You intend something to happen, and it occurs. Traditionally such magick is executed through ritual.
Rituals can be simple or complicated, depending on the tradition. Some are acts of folk magick, and require only household tools. Their actions seem fairly ordinary, but when done with will and intent, they become a magick ritual. Things like cooking, sewing and gardening, along with dancing, singing and playing with dolls or sticks can be incorporated into folk magick.
A lot of our superstitions devolved out of folk magick. Things like throwing a pinch of salt over your shoulder when the shaker spills seem random, but there is an idea behind hem. Early on my path, I was told by a practitioner that salt naturally absorbs harmful energy. Salt is used in all manner of protection spells. When the shaker spills, it would be surmised that harmful energy was around you. It could be a malicious thought or word from someone else, what those in folk traditions think of as the evil eye when done intentionally to cause harm. The salt was “reacting” to the harmful energy. To get rid of the harm, you threw the vessel, the substance that attracts the harm, the salt, behind you, to put it to your past, not before you, to your future. When you realize that, it no longer is a superstition, and becomes a ritual of magick.
Complicated rituals are found in other traditions, from formalized systems of Wicca to ceremonial magicians and their lodges. Even most mainstream religious services have their basis in older, more mystical rituals. Such rites involve special words, movements with and without specific ritual tools, done in a specific manner. The magical orders of witches and magicians have their tried and true methods of doing spells, specific acts of magick. Though some divide witchcraft and Hermetic magick into low and high forms of magick, both can be quite complicated in their own right, just different.
These more complex paths are based on systems of correspondence. In magick, all things relate to each other. Certain objects share qualities with certain ideas and intentions. The light of the Sun can be seen in the shining metal gold. The two are related, just as the light of the Moon is seen in the metal silver. Sun and Moon are symbolic of male and female, projective and receptive, rational and intuitive. The correspondence systems build upon these qualities, forming intricate cosmologies and theories. These systems relate intentions with astrology, symbols, herbs, stones, colors and metals. By matching your intention with the proper rituals, tools and timing, you create a powerful spell.
Instant magick takes the best qualities of both these systems and merges them into a harmonious whole. The technique uses the simplicity of folk magick and the art and logic of the correspondence style systems, but instead of focusing on the outer tools, the focus is brought back to the inner tools. The inner experience, the practitioner’s own ability to sense and manipulate energy, and the divine connection are the greatest tools of all.
In complicated forms of magick, and even aspects of simple folk magick, the preparation involved in getting the necessary tools together prevents the practitioner from using magick in day-to-day life, for day-to-day needs. Instant magick makes magick instantly accessible. The results are not always instant, but with if not an instant manifestation. The results are not always instant, but with some of these spells however, you will feel an immediate difference as soon as you do them.
Immediate change most often occurs when you change the inside reality first. Most practitioners of spellcraft are focused on using ritual to create a change in the environment and people around them. Most of the spells in this book focus on using energy to bring a change in you, the spell caster, rather than the outside world. When you change your inner reality, you change your viewpoint, and the way you relate to the outer world. If you transform your relationship with the situation in the inner world, you will transform the situation at hand in the outside world. Once you practice magick long enough, you realize what mystics have known for centuries – there is very little difference between the “outside” and “inside” world. It’s just a point of view.
Let’s say you are in a situation where a coworker or family member is doing something that really bothers you. It might be a perfectly acceptable action, like constantly tapping his foot, but it just annoys you. As time goes on, it bothers you more and more. You have asked him to stop, but it’s an unconscious habit, so he always falls back into it even though he doesn’t mean to do it. It distracts you from your own tasks at hand. What do you do?
Most people who start the practice of magick would do a spell to make him stop it permanently. They see themselves as the mighty magicians, and something this trivial they can affect immediately.
Some would argue it would be unethical, because you are violating this person’s free will tap his foot if he so chooses. He’s not hurting anyone. They would have a point too.
Your last option should really be your first option. You could change yourself, change your reaction patterns, so that it no longer bothers you. You have the greatest sovereignty over yourself. Use it. We are here to master ourselves as well as influence the outer world. If you are bothered and annoyed by someone else, chances are it has little to do with the foot tapping. You are upset about something, and you are simply venting it in this small way, making a mountain out of a molehill. If you really had the magical power most witches claim to have, little things would not bother you. See this person as a spiritual teacher urging you to look inside and use magick upon yourself. Our antagonist, big and small, can be our greatest teachers.
Many forget that magick is all change, and the greatest change is the change in the inner, not outer landscape. Outer magical changes seem more impressive at first, but the inner changes are more long lasting. They are the most impressive. Anyone can learn to do some basic spells and have good results, but the practitioners who develop a solid spiritual and magical practice and become more centered, calm, healthy and truly confident over time are the magicians who impress me.
Instant Magick contains spells of change for both the inner and outer world, but you should never forget that you are the connecting point between the two. Your relationship to these worlds is where the strongest magick manifests. For outward spells, it can take longer to manifest in the physical world. Your results might not be instantaneous, but your ability to take action and self-responsibility will be more immediate. Magick gives us the tools to act when problems arise. Other times, outer manifestation is almost instantaneous. Many witches and mages have experienced doing a spell, such as getting a communication from a distant out-of-touch friend, and received a call or letter within the day.
At first glance, the techniques of instant magick will seem to be simple self-help, based on affirmations and creative visualization. When I look at them, I see that such modern takes on magick, found in corporate boardrooms and recovery groups, are actually harnessing more ancient principles of magick. My interest in instant magick grew out of an understanding of these techniques. The first “spells” I learned in witchcraft were much like the ones found in this book. They involved, will, intent, a light meditative state and quick visualization. They served me very well to this day.
Then I met other witches who told me I wasn’t doing “real” magick. I didn’t know “real” spellcraft. To them, spells were the recipes they copied out of their teacher’s magical book of rituals, called a Book of Shadows. They felt such spells were more valid, because it was traditional and passed on through secrecy, yet these particularly witches didn’t have a great understanding of how and why they worked. They simply followed the recipe. Since my technique was more fluid and imaginative, but lacked the esoteric words and ingredients, it didn’t seem like real magick to them.
I knew my magick worked, but I still felt inadequate compared to their traditional training. I felt like I was missing something and I continued my studies in more traditional directions. I learned systems of correspondence. I learned formal ritual. I learned astrology and herbalism. All of these techniques are wonderful, valid and I do use them, but I still found myself going back to my daily quick spells. I found myself expanding upon them, and adding to them, using the knowledge of more complicated forms of magick, yet not adding physical tools to it. I went beyond simple visualization and affirmation, though they are still my foundation. As I became more sensitive to energy, I moved into using my will with energy. My visualizations became more abstract, more symbolic, yet still powerful. I worked my knowledge of, and most importantly, my growing relationship with, the elements, planets, colors and deities into my acts of instant magick.
Through these experiments, my magical awareness grew. My understanding grew. My spirituality grew. Through a merging of the aspects of magick that were most important to me, I found a path that I could use whenever and wherever I desired.
Now I thought I was so special for expanding upon these basic techniques, but found out that I was not the only one. Some techniques and ways of doing things may be particular to me and my own unique thought process, but I found the basic idea of instant magick, of energetic magick with some form of correspondences, but without physical tools, was being used by many practitioners. I know a few who focus on chant. Others petition deities or spirits for their results. Many more still just focus in the energy of their desire. But they all work and all are forms of instant magick.
The idea of no tools magick isn’t as new and modern as one might think. Doreen Valiente, best known as Gerald Gardner’s high priestess and arguably the mother of modern Wicca, wrote about it in her book, Natural Magick. In the chapter titled Mind Magick, she tells the story of Karagoz.
“In the late eighteenth century there lived a remarkable man called Mehmet Karagoz. He was known as the Wizard of Albania. People from all over Europe and Asia sought his advice and told stories of his supernormal powers. He was born in the wild and remote mountains of Tartary, and his father was a shaman, a magician-priest of the private religion of those parts.
“When he was a young man, Mehmet seemed to be so lacking in natural ability that his father felt unable to have him initiated, thinking that the youth was incapable at that time of following his father’s vocation. Instead, the old shaman gave Mehemet a piece of practical instruction: “Believe in the possibility of what you intend to do, hold it strongly in your mind, and it will happen.” He told his on to practice constantly and one day he would find that the power had indeed developed and was his.
“This instruction of his father’s was the foundation of Mehmet Karagoz’s magical career. He traveled widely in search of knowledge and eventually settled in Albania, where he founded his own occult school and became one of the most famous and most mysterious of adepts. He used no rituals, but worked entirely through the powers of the mind.”
—Natural Magic, p 17
The story of Karagoz shows how the most important factor to magick is belief and mental focus, rather than tools, and that it has been a part of traditional magick for quite a while. In this book, techniques will be expanded upon to give you more inner tools to focus your mind and direct your beliefs.
Through learning these techniques, you will discover what aspects of instant magick work best for you. You don’t have to use them all. Don’t be overwhelmed by the choices. The variety seems to make the system too complicated, but the options give you the freedom to choose what works for you. Follow your intuition. See what sparks your magical curiosity. What raises the hairs on the back of your neck or send a shiver down your spine? That’s where you will find your magick. Then you will have the knowledge and skills to create your own instant spells, to be used whenever you need to create a change in your life.