Magic May Not Be What You Think

Before I really get into the core of this post, I want to preface this with the fact that other people have written on this specific subject before. This won’t necessarily come across as profound or groundbreaking for a lot of people. For some others, it might be the first they’ve heard of it. This is simply my take and my journey to it. 

I was really spending an inconvenient amount of time hemming and hawing over what exactly to call this post, and what to call the practice. I’ve seen some elements of it related to chaos magic, I’ve also seen it called anarchic magic. The issues I have with those terms is the connotation of negativity associated with chaos and anarchy in their very basic Merriam-Webster-esque definitions and not the ones practitioners have adopted for themselves. I have always had issues with written language and the power words have before they come to us (more on that later). 

That’s not to say your results won’t have some elements of chaos attached to them if you aren’t careful with how you go about it (more on this later as well). 

Anyway... 

Many people, but not all, come to paganism after being disenchanted by a Christian upbringing. I’m no exception to that. I grew up in a religious household where I was required to attend church every Sunday and was required to wear a dress no matter what. I still hate dresses by the way.  

My parents divorced when I was six years old, and I later found out that a lot of the reason behind that was because of the beliefs of my father, which greatly clashed with those of my mother. My dad is a self-professed pantheist and my mom is a Methodist. My dad bought me my first books on paganism when I was 13, and also my first Rider Waite tarot deck. My mom found and threw away my tarot cards within a month of me receiving them. It took her longer to find my books.  

This is a lot of personal information and I find I’m rambling a bit, but I’m simply trying to line out how I found my way to where I am today. Side note here that I actually have a very good, solid, positive relationship with both of my parents. I don’t mean to demonize my mother. She has terrible anxiety which fed into her behavior when I was young. She knows where I stand today and has chosen to accept me for who I am rather than risk losing the relationship with her child. I am thankful for this every day, because many people aren’t so lucky.  

Those first books I mentioned above were Practical Solitary Magic by Nancy B. Watson and Moon Magick by D.J. Conway. I found myself sneaking outside at night with tealight candles, incense sticks I bought at the metaphysical shop down the road, and my book of spells. It felt amazing... but nothing really ever came of what I was doing. It slowly began to feel like a chore, and I started to resent it. I stayed with that path until I was in my early 20’s. Then I fell away from all religion and spirituality. 

I was a staunch atheist for 3 or 4 years of my life. However, the whole premise that we can’t explain so much in our reality kept floating back to my mind, and that led me to roll into calling myself agnostic for a while. 

 My husband at the time was really into Germanic reconstructionism and found an Asatru group online. After reading up on Asatru, I definitely had my reservations. If you have any familiarity with Asatru, you know why. But my husband talked me to going to a meet and greet event with a local kindred. The people seemed okay, and I voiced my concerns with what I had read about their “folkway.” They assured me they weren’t the white supremacists that so many people make them out to be. With caution, I attended their blots (holy day gatherings). I spent a lot of time reading up on their mythologies and traditions. Learned the Elder Futhark. It all seemed good and well, but then the racism started to seep out of every crack. I became increasingly uncomfortable and ended up leaving the group after a couple of years, and intensely embarrassed that I was ever part of them.  

I found myself again angry at spirituality. I always get the image of Murderface from Metalocalypse when he tries to find his faith and angrily yells “ITS ALL THE SAME” at the end of his montage when he’s sitting in a pew at a Church of Satan. That might be a weird parallel to draw, but it’s pretty accurate.  

During this time of bitterness and anger, I had my first experience with real magic.  

I was at a point where my life was chaotic, I was suffering from intense depression and a debilitating medical condition that made it almost impossible to work. I had recently started back at college (at 27) to try and get a new direction. However, I was still struggling on just about every level. I felt alone. 

I sat one night intensely in thought about so much. I was at a turning point and in the middle of an emotional breakdown. I simply sat down at my coffee table in my living room, pulled a piece of thick paper from one of my sketch books, grabbed my calligraphy dip pen, and penned an intensely emotional letter to “it.” I addressed it in a way that was invoking every powerful idea of what an all-encompassing universal power might be.  In that letter, I expressed gratitude, sadness, and every longing I felt. I cried the whole time I wrote it. Then I took it outside in the night, laid it in the grass, and burned it. Then I poured some liquor over the ashes. 

 

This was not something I had read in a book. I did not speak any evocation. I lit no candles, burned no incense. I didn’t call out to some god of an ancient pantheon, or to the Christian god, or any named idea of god in any way. That power had no face, no form, no gender, no holy book, and no name. That power wasn’t an anthropomorphized idea.  

Over the next year, my life was in an upheaval. Literally everything changed. It was hard. It didn’t take too long for me to realize that the cathartic letter I had written was actually a powerful ritual. The changes in my life were what I had asked for. The problem was that they were happening in painful ways.  

My marriage ended, I lost friends, people died. I lost nearly everything I had and ended up moving in with my grandma while I tried to get my shit together. I also landed myself in several short, toxic relationships. One almost killed me. I became an alcoholic. A borderline sex addict. I was a self-destructive mess.

 

Then, the positives came. Like every element of my existence had been broken down to bare bones and then was slowly being rebuilt. I landed a contract job that would later lead to me finding a very satisfying career. My health improved. I met a guy I never thought I’d end up staying with because he was a few years younger than me and was just very different than any guy I had ever been with. A few months into the relationship, I found myself pregnant (something else of note because I was told I would likely never bear any children of my own years prior and had never had so much as a scare). This guy and I got married and he has turned out to be the very best thing that has ever happened to me.  

Changes are still happening, but it seems I hit the top of the curve and things are leveling out for the most part. I do stay on guard because I realize another hit could come at any moment and I need to be prepared for anything. 

The important thing to note here, is that I’ve received everything I asked for. But for those things to take place, destruction had to happen. This is where care needs to be taken if you choose to take this path. 

I came to the inadvertent ritual from a place of chaos and desperation. As such, I poured that energy into it. So what I got in return was chaos and upheaval to reach those ends. In one way, I feel like if I hadn’t come from such an intensely powerful place, maybe nothing would have happened. Maybe I’d still be stuck in limbo. In another, I wonder if I had a calmer and more calculated approach, it would have had a much smoother transition. 

I no longer have occult books that I use as tools. What I do have is what I read out of entertainment and curiosity. I keep oracle and tarot cards because they are just something else to help me pull threads from the unseen fabric and look at them a little closer. I don’t use any other tools really. I use my intent, and I go about it much more carefully, lest I disrupt the powerful path my life has taken.  

All this had made me a very cautious witch (although some people would be offended that I even call myself that), but someone who also has come to recognize a profound personal truth. That the power I had called out to, and tapped into, wasn’t some deity. It was me...and the collective energy that comprises everything.  

We are all part of the fabric of our reality and there are things we may never come to understand, but we can push and pull on that fabric. If you’re feeling like the tools and techniques you are using came from a book and leave you with a sense of emptiness and monotony, know that someone else’s magic is not your magic. What I have written about here is not your magic. You may have read something in this post that speaks to you, that you can use a jumping off point, but know that you will need to find your own way to fulfill your potential as a practitioner. Just never forget that your magic is not in your tools. It is in you.