If Magick Wants Me, It Knows Where I Am

What if it's the magick path itself that's the problem.

Last week I wrote about how many magicians – myself included – have been seeing a real dip in the success of their magical work. I ended that post by saying that I feel I need a fresh approach to my magickal practice, but that I wasn’t sure how that would look.

I’m still not sure, but I have been gnawing away at one particular factor in it all that I reckon may help unravel the mystery of what comes next. I think it’s “magick” itself that may be the issue.

While I have been practising magick for over 15 years at this stage, most of my life, I had a much broader “spirituality” view and practice. There was always some element of actual magick around for me – I read Crowley’s Book IV in secondary school, and I had a brief Wicca period in my mid-twenties, for instance – but it was never the main part of what I was into.

I was more New Age, really, being deep into Stuart Wilde and Alice Bailey from a very early age, along with a lot of Zen and other Buddhism, and various Indian inspired bhakti practices and outlooks.

I also definitely went through a big “Law of Attraction” phase. When I finished college in my mid-twenties (I studied holistic health), I was totally burnt out from every spiritual and woo and took a break for a couple of years. It was The Secret, of all things, that dragged me back in.

I only seriously got into magick as my defining practice after watching the now infamous Grant Morrison Disinfo speech, and then followed up on the names and ideas he mentioned in it.

And so my life as a Chaos Magician began.

Looking back now, though, I would have to say that Morrison was always the biggest influence on me with regard to Chaos Magick, particularly their thoughts in the documentary Talking With Gods. If you can find the bonus Disc2 that came with the original digital release, then there are some other great magick ideas in that, too.

While I like a lot of Morrison’s comics, but I am definitely more of a fan of them as a magician and a person than their work. I can listen to them talking about their work much more enthusiastically than the actual work itself. Though, to be fair, I am like that with quite a lot of creators.

Morrison, for me, is a great example of someone actually living and breathing magick rather than someone who practices it. I am aware that the public face of Morrison is quite likely not a true reflection of how they are as a day-to-day person, but even the construction of that particular personality is quite magical.

And that’s what attracted me to Chaos Magick. I wanted that “thing” that Morrison symbolised to me—a magical joie de vivre! I wanted an ease, and a way of walking powerfully and commandingly through my life. A sense of control, I suppose.

But Chaos Magick didn’t deliver that for me. Nor magick in general.

These days, if someone asked me what I am – not that many do—I’m more than likely going to still say a Chaos Magician because it broadly seems correct. A lot of what I am known for, such as The Forty Servants or The Four Devils, is entirely rooted in a Chaos Magick framework. But am I actually a Chaos Magician any more?

I’m not sure if I really am.

I’m no longer sold on some core tenets of the philosophy, but I’ll not go into all that right now, or else this post will quickly become novel-sized. But in looking at the idea that maybe I am no longer a Chaos Magician, I started to extend that out to “Am I even a magician any more?”

Does any of the magical worldview—particularly that of the various Western traditions—still resonate with me? Are the goals of magick actually something I care about, or even want?

I’ve spent over fifteen years walking this magick road, but does this road lead to my mountain or someone else’s? Do I even want to go to a fucking mountain?

I’ve been thinking for the last few weeks or so that maybe I have contracted into a worldview and philosophy that isn’t getting me where or what I want, and rather than just continuing to battle with it and trying to “get it to work”, I’m going to loosen the grip and stop so tightly defining what my spiritual practices should look like.

Who am I if I’m not a magician any more — and is that what’s actually trying to emerge here?

If magick wants me, it knows where I am. If something else is trying to step forward, I’m no longer going to block the door.

_____

And that’s it for this time, I hope you got something good from it. If you’d like to chat about it, you can leave a comment below, or come find me on Bluesky!

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So, until next time,
MAY YOUR BEST DAYS BE AHEAD!

Tommie