The Elements of Spellcrafting

by Jason Miller

  We either accept the situation or we try again, but a Sorcerer should not simply leave it up to the Gods. Otherwise, what is the point of Sorcery at all?

  The Spirits Do Not Micro-Manage

  In Key 14, I mentioned a spell that I did when I first started teaching. The spell was an evocation of Tzadkiel that requested he help me build my business, to reach more people, and to make more money doing what I loved. Tzadkiel, in his otherworldly way, must have looked at my life like a mechanic looks at an engine and said, “Well, here's your problem right here! Just get rid of this other job that you don't really like, and you will have an extra 40 hours a week to devote to Strategic Sorcery! Let's just go ahead and take that out....” I was laid off from my day job shortly thereafter. The problem is, I needed that job to pay the bills.

  Now, funny enough, a good friend, fellow author and Magician Rufus Opus was doing the same thing at around the same time. He also evoked Tzadkiel, and he also got laid off from his day job after requesting help getting his teaching off the ground. How and why this happened is where we differ. He feels that Tzadkiel knows the mechanics of the whole universe and loves us and knows what is best. Therefore, our respective lay-offs were the wisdom of the spirit.

  I, however, do not share his faith. My feeling is that Tzadkiel doesn't live here on earth, is not human, and is not responsible for knowing every little tidbit about my life and how it works. I evoked him and bound him to a job, which he did with efficiency and speed. The fact that it got me laid off from another job that I needed was not his grand plan for my life; it was just a logical response to my request. But it also wasn't his fault—it was mine.

  I am certain that it was not the will of God or the Archangel of Jupiter that I get laid off from a job, just to have a few more hours to devote to my business while frantically freaking out and finding a new day job that didn't pay as well as the one I lost, only to go and quit that job a few years later.

  Rufus, however, is equally certain that it was divine will and we can call it a plan because we can both look back and say, “Well, if that didn't happen, maybe I would not be where I am today.” That's true of anything, though, isn't it? Yes, things will work out in the end, but it's not because things work out according to some plan written by a detail-obsessed divine author of creation. It is because you will work out a new plan. You make yourself happy in the new situation and look back and say, “See, if it wasn't for this or that, I wouldn't be here.” Well, yeah. But you would be somewhere else, probably just as happy if not more so.

  Mechanisms of Magic

  The biblical books of Samuel tell the stories of how people who aren't supposed to look into or touch the Ark of the Covenant are stricken dead by God. In 1 Samuel 6:19, the men of Beth Shemesh looked into the Ark and were stricken dead. Thankfully, Indiana Jones remembered this story and told Marion to close her eyes at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, thus sparing them both the Nazi face-melting treatment. In 2 Samuel 6:2, we learn of Uzzah, who was just trying to save the Ark from falling off the cart when the ox stumbled. Did God appreciate the effort? Nope. God struck him dead too. But was it really that God was mad at their irreverence? Or was it perhaps that they were not wearing all the priestly prophylactics like the breastplate that is needed to handle direct exposure to divinity? Might this have been less about God being pissed off and murderous than it was about these guys touching a live wire and getting electrocuted? That is my take on it.

  In the New Testament, we have a more positive example of the mechanistic nature of divine power when a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years touched the hem of Jesus's garment. Jesus stopped and asked, “Who touched me?” When the disciples all denied it, he insisted, noting that “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.” He didn't heal her by will. He healed her accidentally and drained power from him through touch. When she admits to touching him, he notes that her faith had healed her and sends her on her way. He didn't do it on purpose; he didn't even know she was there. It just happened because power moves like that.

  My point in bringing up these biblical examples is to point out that the unseen forces of the world are, at least as far as I have found, much more mechanistic than most spiritual people believe. There is not a reason for everything and no one overseeing the unfolding of life in every detail. It is, in fact, this mechanistic nature that allows Magic to have an effect at all. If everything was pre-written, there would be no point to Sorcery. We could all just pray for what we hoped would happen, but ultimately it wouldn't matter.

  Instead there are powers and spirits and forces that we get to communicate with and leverage. We are, in fact, one of these powers ourselves and must never forget it.

  An Offering of “Thanks, but No Thanks”

  Even if we accept that there is no divine plan or mechanistic universe, a lot of people feel that if a spirit or spell gives them a result, that they are committed to accepting that result and to do otherwise would be an offense against the Gods.

  Wrong!

  If you were looking for a date and I set you up with one of my friends, would you continue to date them and marry them just because I set you guys up? Of course not! So why do we feel we must do this with the spirits?

  I have already shared the story in Key 15 about how Manman Brigitte got me a job offer at a hospital for the criminally insane. Was I obligated to take this job? Heck no! And I didn't take it. I considered this more a joke on her part than a serious attempt at solving my problem anyway—the Guédé are like that sometimes, and this was a kind of thing that they would do. Instead of making an offering of thanks for her boon, I made an offering of “thanks, but no thanks.” I drew her veve, laid out the rum she likes, thanked her for her efforts, then let it go. If you work with spirits, I suggest you practice the offering of “thanks, but no thanks” on a regular basis. Just because your spell manifested something doesn't mean you have to settle for it.

  A student a few years back had to make that offering of “thanks, but no thanks” to a Saint. She did a spell invoking St. Cajetan to help her get back into the workforce after taking several years off to have a child and raise it until pre-school age. Saint Cajetan is a patron of the unemployed and also founded a bank in 1539 called the Banco della Pieta to help the poor. That bank has evolved over the last 500 years and is still in existence today as the Banco di Napoli. He is excellent at providing boons that not only keep people out of poverty, but generate real wealth.

  She did a series of energetic pillar and spheres1 workings, as well as offerings to amplify her power to “be heard” by the Saint, then asked for a job that paid her a six-figure salary. It was more than she felt she deserved, but she was determined to go big or go home. By the end of the novena, she received the offer she needed from an old employer, as well as leads on childcare options. To turn her back on this must seem like sacrilege to some, but that is exactly what she did.

  When the offering was staring her in the face, and the thought of returning to a 50-hour-a-week job was a reality she decided she couldn't do, so she went back to St. Cajetan and asked for the same salary, but to work no more than 32 hours a week total, with the ability to work some of those hours from home.

  Imagine the balls this took! Did she think she somehow deserved this? No. She just wanted it and was willing to risk the offer on it. She re-formed her statement of intent to include it, and lo and behold, she got it. If she had just assumed that the good Saint knows what's best, and that you need to take whatever result a spirit or spell grants, she would never have gotten what she really wanted and was capable of.

  Sovereignty and Teachers

  Of course, it is not just spirits that we need to maintain our sovereignty with; it is human teachers as well. There is not enough room in 12 of these books to list the names of all the spiritual teachers who have abused their positions of authority to get their hands on the wallets or sex organs of their followers. This year has seen scandals in the pagan, Buddhist, and Catho
lic worlds around such issues. I believe that mentors are a blessing, and a good teacher should be honored, but there is no excuse for abuse.

  Sometimes we hand over our own sovereignty over ourselves without thinking much about it. In these cases, it is not just the teacher that is responsible, but us. I remember a conversation with a young Lama that I won't name. He spent his entire life as a monk, but he told me students came to him all the time for advice on marriage and business. He would advise people as best he could according to the teachings of the Dharma, and when appropriate, he would perform Tibetan Mo divination. Ultimately though, these are two areas of life that, as a monk, he really doesn't know anything about, and he is concerned that students perceive his words as having more weight than they really should because of his position. If he is uncomfortable with the amount of blind faith that gets aimed at him, imagine what less scrupulous people get up to.

  I do whatever I can to discourage people thinking of me as inscrutable, but this kind of thing even happens to me. Once someone emailed me with a question, and then took the lack of response as some kind of wise message to look within. They wrote later to thank me for my wisdom because ultimately, they solved their own problem. That's great, but I felt I had to correct them; I had simply missed their email. I am not so enigmatic as to work in ways that are that mysterious.

  Karma Avoidance

  Probably the biggest reason that people turn their sovereignty over in Sorcery is the avoidance of responsibility and Karma. Remember those weasely modifiers we talked about back in Key 6? I see people all the time turn over their sovereignty, trying to get around the ethical issues that come with spells by using the modifier: “If it be your will.” This usually goes at the end of a prayer or invocation to a God, spirit, Saint, or power that you are calling upon. People have explained to me that if they put this statement in, it absolves them from any kind of ethical responsibility because it is ultimately the will of that deity and not them. Sorry, I'm not buying it. There are a couple things wrong with this.

  If you are doing a spell, it is usually more active than just a simple prayer. You intend for a certain result to come about, so you don't get to wash your hands just because at the end you said, “Thy will be done.” If you go see a hitman (spirit), and tell him about this guy that you would love to see iced (your spell goal), and leave a pile of money (offering), but say, “You do what you think is right,” that doesn't absolve you from any moral responsibility—you still just hired a hit man.

  Magic is about responsibility. It is about establishing your agency in the world and owning it. You are not just begging for something to happen if God wants it to—you are an active participant in making it happen. That's Sorcery for you.

  Now, you might be paranoid at this point and think, “Oh, my God, I have to give up Magic because I might hurt someone with my actions.” But you are always running the risk of that, Magic or not. That is how this hard-edged world of ours works. Every action affects other people. It's just that with Magic, we have sort of X factor in our pockets that does not conform neatly to the rules.

  You are responsible for what you do. You don't get to absolve yourself from Karma by turning that over. Sovereignty implies owning your actions.

  Exercise Your Agency

  One of the apparent paradoxes of Magic is that we often call upon Cosmic forces that are so far beyond our ordinary perception that they inspire worship and awe, and ask them to help us with stuff that is, from a cosmic standpoint, relatively petty nonsense. Hekate is a Goddess so mysterious as to almost defy description, yet she has been called upon in defixiones tablets to curse neighbors and fix horse races. Jesus is of course seen by Christians as the incarnation of the God Most High, but Harry M. Hyatt recorded spells from the 1930s that call upon him to hot foot enemies in the direction that you fire your shotgun. Kurukulla is an ancient Goddess who can lead you to full Buddhahood, but you can pay to have a group of monks perform her puja to help you get laid.

  What gives? Why would spirits and entities like this allow us to call upon them for petty things, and sometimes even acts that might be considered immoral?

  The answer is that we each have our own agency, and the Magic is largely mechanistic. Hekate is indeed cosmic in scope, so much so that she is not particularly interested in how you settle your dispute with your coworker. You make offerings; you do the rituals; she grants the request. That's how it works most of the time.

  The Take-Away

  This key is about taking responsibility and maintaining your sovereignty. Harold wants to stick pins in someone but wants Salphegor to take responsibility so that his hands are clean. Our demon reminds him that it's his party, his responsibility, and his sovereignty.

  Just remember that you hold the agency here. You hold the sovereignty. Don't yield your life over to spirits to make decisions for you. Work with them, even serve them, but maintain your own sovereignty and decisions. That is what Sorcery is here for.

  Parting Words

  It has been almost exactly 30 years since I tore open the cellophane wrapper on my first Tarot Deck. Thirty years since reading my first books on Magic.1 Thirty years since I first cast a circle, lit a candle, and asked a spirit to put an extra $50 in my hand—money that came from a found wallet just a few days later.

  During the last three decades, I have studied with enterprising Root-workers, renegade priests, and talky Order initiates who loved trading in secrets. I have gotten drunk with loose-lipped Lamas, done Magic with Catholic priests and Satanists in the same room, and lived for a month with a verifiable wizard. I have been to 21 countries and traveled to caves rumored to be gateways to hell, icebergs whispered to hold entrances to the Devil's school, and mountains where Magicians did battle for the fate of nations. I have been initiated into Magical orders, tantric lineages, pagan lines both ancient and modern, and even consecrated as a Bishop.

  I have seen crazy inexplicable paranormal events and things that can only be called miracles. I have also seen enough to know that you cannot count on those to save you in a pinch or to build a life around. If you want Magic to work, you have to work it wisely in conjunction with living the rest of your life wisely as well.

  There is no Magic Magic. That's not a typo. It means that there is no one piece of Magic that is more Magical than the rest, no one spell or spirit that is going to accomplish the life changes that the others have not.

  I know more Magic than I can ever use in this life, and chances are you do too. If you don't, then stick with it for a few years and you will. But there is no one Magic bit of Magic that will make it all work out. The spells work fine; it's how you use them that makes the difference. The methods are many but the principals are few. These 21 Keys have helped me guide myself and my students to lives that are successful in money, in love, and in spiritual awakening. Now the Keys are yours.

  Appendix 1:

  The Seal of Manifestation

  The sigil that graces the cover of this book was received in working between me and Matthew Brownlee. It is one of a set of seals that affects the movement of Magic itself. To understand this seal, you need to follow its path and understand the layers that Magic moves through.

  Begin at the circle on the right. This is what you intend to manifest; it's off to the side because it lies in an alternate probable future from the ones that are currently lined up to become reality. This seal pulls it inward and lifts it up to receive the blessings of spirit. It then drives it down harder into manifestation, “earthing it” to physicality and making it more tangible. It lifts it up again for blessing and elevation, then down once more forming a shape that starts to recall a pentagram—probably the most recognizable symbol for Magic in the Western traditions. Rather than completing a pentagram, however, the seal spirals the Sorcery forth into time. If you concentrate on the spiral, you can start to see a depth to the sigil that moves beyond the two dimensions it appears in. This speaks to the cyclical nature of reality, and our spell is launched into mani
festation.

  You can utilize this seal however you like—on petitions, on talismans, traced in the air, or held in the mind. It is a catalyst for Sorcery, and aids in the speed of manifestation as well as controlling some of the Rhizomic spread.

  Appendix 2:

  7 Keys for Successful Divination

  Originally I was going to include divination as one of the keys of Spellcrafting, but I decided to leave it out because ultimately spells are about making things happen, whereas divination is about prediction and insight.

  Of course, I use divination in my work and thought it might be helpful to share a few keys that have improved my skills and success:

  1. Better to be wrong than vague. Everyone is afraid of being wrong when they divine, and so often people couch their divination in such vague terms that no matter what happens, they can look back and claim that they were right. Don't do this. Vague information isn't actionable or helpful. It's better to be detailed and be wrong. Lots of professionals can be wrong—just look at the success rate of mutual fund managers and lawyers.

  2. Be brutal. No one likes delivering unpleasant news, but in the end, its better to deliver unpleasant tidings than it is to pretend like everything is fine. Yes, the death card can mean great change, but if the question was about someone's health, that great change is possibly exactly what it looks like.

  3. Be literal. Divination is sometimes very literal. It is often as literal as it can possibly be. I once drew the Pope card for someone who, unbeknownst to me, was scheduled to have an audience with the Pope in a month. Another time I drew the Lovers card, which shows a man choosing between two women. This querent had literally been in a three way that week.