Hi guest! As you can see, the new Wizard Forums has been revived, and we are glad to have you visiting our site! However, it would be really helpful, both to you and us, if you registered on our website! Registering allows you to see all posts, and make posts yourself, which would be great if you could share your knowledge and opinions with us! You could also make posts to ask questions!
Hey, new to this forum, sorry if there's already a thread dedicated to this but I'm doing a quick poat before work to ask: what techniques are there to maintain sanity and stability in ceremonial magick? I've been doing this only a few months, but I feel I've made a lot of progress. Unfortunately it's had an impact on my sense of stability. I only feel leveled out when I stop doing magick. Everything I do magickally lends itself to this wobbly, untethered state. This state lends itself towards the practice of magick, but it makes daily life difficult. People ask me how I'm doing and I just stare wide-eyed into the ether and try to collect myself enough to give a normal answer. Is there an initiated secret I'm missing that could help with this, or do I just need to invoke more earth or another grounding power?
Unfortunately, success in magic can lead to a lot of questions about 'normal' life. Since a lot of magic is basically 'hacking your own brain', it's possible to screw yourself up pretty badly if you aren't careful. As Grant Morrison put it: "you still have to be able to talk to people without scaring them"
Unfortunately, success in magic can lead to a lot of questions about 'normal' life. Since a lot of magic is basically 'hacking your own brain', it's possible to screw yourself up pretty badly if you aren't careful. As Grant Morrison put it: "you still have to be able to talk to people without scaring them"
I'll be frank, I learned magick on a months-long pot snd lotus binge that basically showed me how "normal" human consciousness is an illusion. I'm not necessarily afraid of being incompatible with society, and have considered monastic life, but I recognize that, if I'm to complete the work, this vessel kind of has to last long enough, and I've already done crazy stuff from this "nothing is real, everything is permitted" state of mind. I suppose then the question, as with every question, is a personal one: do I pump the breaks and meter this out over a few extra years to keep my job and social life a little longer, or do I pull a full Hanged Man and let 'er friggin rip? I guess I'm looking for tips and tricks to keep it steady long enough to actually rely on magick to propel my whole life, because last time I tried that ended in jail cause I was totally whacked out of my gourd.
I've spent a lot of time at a monastery, people came to visit every day having had some kind of destabilizing realization that they were unable to integrate in a healthy way. The common advice is grounding practices that widen and soften awareness. As I was at a Buddhist monastery, the go to approach was metta practice, radiating out warmth and kind feelings for oneself and everything around oneself.
You already said that easing off magic helps, try taking a year off and just focus on internal practice. Shadow work, metta, breath meditation, whatever brings peace and loosens the tugging feeling of discursive thought. You may even find Franz Bardon's work helpful, the first two steps of Initiation Into Hermetics deal directly in establishing mental solidity and he cautions that the magician who has not mastered this should not advance further in their training for exactly the reasons that you've discovered. I've also found his elemental magic practices in the following steps to be extraordinarily stabilizing and peaceful.
I've spent a lot of time at a monastery, people came to visit every day having had some kind of destabilizing realization that they were unable to integrate in a healthy way. The common advice is grounding practices that widen and soften awareness. As I was at a Buddhist monastery, the go to approach was metta practice, radiating out warmth and kind feelings for oneself and everything around oneself.
You already said that easing off magic helps, try taking a year off and just focus on internal practice. Shadow work, metta, breath meditation, whatever brings peace and loosens the tugging feeling of discursive thought. You may even find Franz Bardon's work helpful, the first two steps of Initiation Into Hermetics deal directly in establishing mental solidity and he cautions that the magician who has not mastered this should not advance further in their training for exactly the reasons that you've discovered. I've also found his elemental magic practices in the following steps to be extraordinarily stabilizing and peaceful.
I feel like a stubborn mule, but I absolutely do not want to ease off the magick. Even a day or two without the LBRP leaves me a wreck in other ways with my current life situation. It's kind of my lifeline for dealing with that stuff. Balancing myself internally and manifesting better conditions. I'm off the lunch shift now and I am feeling better, I can get kind of dramatic after intense ritual work. I appreciate the advice, and I'll for sure look into Metta and Franz Bardon.
It's something that can happen to the best of us, where we do magic simply for the sake of doing magic, loosing track of the "why" behind. I think it's valuable to have a systematic, compartmentalized approach and at the very least have a rough differentiation between practical go-get-shit-done sorcery on the one hand, and theurgic elevation of the soul to divinity on the other. The mantic arts, the meditative traditions and the psychological mind-hacks could be their own branches as well. There are many more arms to grow I'm sure. The point being, you should be aware of what exactly you're doing and why. Like a Hindu deva - each arms holds an item for a specific purpose.
And to be very frank, I do see a tendency to use magic as a form of escapism, especially in this rather decadent age - it's very grand and romantic to be a "Mr. Microcosmos" in a world of subservient spirits and trip out on tales of your innate divinity and kinship with the stars, engaging in metaphysical speculations and at times peering behind the flimsy veil of reality, only to be out of shape, broke and socially maladapted in real life. Rather than facing your internal crossing-of-the-wires and your external battle of establishing yourself in the world - utilizing the arsenal of magic to solve these - it becomes a mere power fantasy and avoiding real responsibility.
"Fantasyland is a nice place to visit, but a terrible place to live".
I do get what you're saying about that ecstatic state of mind though; it's incredibly pleasant to be in, fantastic for performing magic and doesn't lend itself well to practical affairs at all. Like drunkenness, really. But adaptability is the name of the game. You have to learn to shut it on and off, or at the very least finding that sweet spot in the middle, and you have to be honest with yourself about these things and not shielding your ego against any unpleasant realizations. You can breathe in Qi from the Earth through your soles all you want and hug all the trees in your neighbourhood, but there is an element of escapist power fantasy that can only be broken by being real and self scrutinizing.
"Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water".
Hey, new to this forum, sorry if there's already a thread dedicated to this but I'm doing a quick poat before work to ask: what techniques are there to maintain sanity and stability in ceremonial magick? I've been doing this only a few months, but I feel I've made a lot of progress. Unfortunately it's had an impact on my sense of stability. I only feel leveled out when I stop doing magick. Everything I do magickally lends itself to this wobbly, untethered state. This state lends itself towards the practice of magick, but it makes daily life difficult. People ask me how I'm doing and I just stare wide-eyed into the ether and try to collect myself enough to give a normal answer. Is there an initiated secret I'm missing that could help with this, or do I just need to invoke more earth or another grounding power?
In my personal experience, doing any kind of advanced practice is best grounded by understanding that the mundane and the magickal are two sides of the same coin, and by having a very good grasp of metaphysics (acquired both from books and from applying theory to life by, for example, tracing the geometric structure of mundane parts of reality). The best advice I can honestly give is this, OP: Magic is all causality. You're not "hacking" anything - not the world, not your brain, not even other minds. You are simply pushing the bushes aside and discovering a dirt path that was always in the forest. You're not forging anything new, you are walking the same path that many feet before you have walked in various ages - simply, it is less common to deviate from the clearest, biggest, asphalt path (as is the case of most people).
Magical practice is not supernatural. It is entirely natural and that which created our world to begin with. Insisting it's supernatural is a projection of ego, not an objective observation of Truth/reality. This view tends to break your perception and detaches you from reality.
Essentially, if you can not relate the mundane to the sacred/magickal, you are breaking your own connection to reality and are actually making yourself and your practice less effective. You are actively feeling the effects of this. Your balance in perception/perspective and practice is clearly off, but it can be resolved. Some people are simply more sensitive to imbalance. This can actually serve you well later down the line if you manage to fix it.
If you want a good recommendation for a metaphysical text that helped me a lot, Thomas Taylor's translation of "The Elements of Theology" by Proclus is very good (in my humble opinion), though I do have synesthesia of a certain sort so it's easier for me to read. I know a lot of people find it difficult, but give it a try anyways and see if it helps. Whether you read it or not, I stress again: You need structure and a ground to stand on.
1. Material Components. If you want to access XYZ spirit, power, whatever, do so through a physical object, spoken word, or something else that is NOT in your thoughts. Speak out loud. Do physical actions. Use material objects, tools, etc. This allows you to access magical activity when you want, and the way you want, rather than whenever it wants to come to you. No random thoughts, sensations, feelings, intuitions, any of that. See it, hear it, touch it, or forget it and regard it as bullshit. If it's real it will smack you in the face, if it does not, treat it as not real.
2. Demand Results. Don't just live in a magical world. Do magic for stuff, for anything you think it might do. If it doesn't give you the result you want, maybe don't take it seriously. If it doesn't do anything, treat it as BS.
3. Learn More. Most of the people who get overwhelmed by occult stuff are just ignorant of it. Learn it all so well that you know what parts are OK to laugh at and which parts should be taken seriously. Don't be led around by things you think are cool or interesting, but learn the boring stuff too. Learn most importantly where you are wrong, misinformed, or ignorant. For almost everyone I've ever known who really knew their stuff, when the deep problems occur, they recognize themselves as the major part of the problem, whereas less informed people tend to blame the spirits, vibes, or other esoteric things.
Couple things came to mind reading your post. First, its completely normal to want to go balls deep after you experience something that you feel in your bones. Hell yes you want more of it! Hell yes its addicting! Nothing cooler than the rush of magick, or the indescribable feeling of a demon in your presence (or whatever you are experiencing). That said, ask yourself what is it you are chasing, and is it something that can be rushed?
This is the cool part, you are asking the right question. The fact you are even asking is a huge green flag! When you stop asking that question, yeah that's a problem. The rational part of you is asking 'am I still sane? Is this even fucking normal? How can I talk to anyone about this without sounding like a fucking lunatic?!" That part is healthy and the barometer of your sanity.
No its not normal to do what we are doing. No, its not normal to feel spirit presence. What is normal is not slipping so far into it that you forget the mundane world exists, or cannot tell where one ends and the other begins.
The statement 'Before enlightenment, chop wood and water water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water' is perfect here. After any major working, or experience, do the mundane stuff. Clean the kitchen, cook food, drive to the gas station and talk to the cashier, etc. Do mundane things. There are some major benefits to this:
Your nervous system needs to recalibrate itself, and doing normal mundane shit is perfect for that.
Second, you need to ground yourself and doing mundane, normal boring shit helps move your energy around your body and dissipate the extra charge.
Third, your brain needs a fucking break. Doing boring shit gets your creative, wild, magician aspect of your brain out of the way (opposite of magick) so you can focus on mundane activities, this way your subconscious can process what the fuck just happened. Without that, yeah, you can start to buy into the myth, the fantasy, and lose footing in the real world.
In other words, you must give yourself time to integrate what you learn and what you experience, lest it just be an experience and nothing more than that. You get to choose here, do you want to learn and grow as a result of this magickal path you are on? Or do you just wanna collect badges and experiences like a tourist?
Integration is a thing, and sometimes a few days without magick is exactly what we need. Everyone is different, but we ALL need time to process and integrate what we experience. All that psychology stuff isn't wasted here, its essential.
These are real world, practical things I use in my practice. Staying grounded is super important. I have seen a few go over the edge. They lost the thread back to reality. They weren't bad people, they just lost sight of where that line was and kept going. Its real, and it can be scary.
“Spirit work can be very scattering of your awareness and it’s important that we bring ourselves back to ourselves.
That we stand at this kind of crossroads of all of these options when we do magic. And the idea is to, not just balance on the knife point, of that choice, or chance, or change, but to pick a path.
And to move forward in some way and to orient ourselves. But then to navigate, and to chart, and to navigate those charts that we set.
Right so this notion of centering yourself, what are the experiences that bring you back to yourself in order to pursue those results more thoroughly is part of the ongoing work.”
Consider this: Actors are needed to be able to practically switch personality when they act for a movie or theater. same with cosplay or some act that is made on the spot, improvised. And we all change masks even in our normal life. I'm someone else when working, when at home, when meditating and doing magic. all masks, all semifake personalities.
So it might help you to master wearing a mask and persona of normal person on command, sort of inverted practice of becoming someone else when starting the ritual. In ceremonial magic some groups start ritual with redressing and ritual leaving of normal space and entering the magical one. And after ritual they do reversed version to leave it and return to casual life. It is sort of mental gymnastics that takes some time to practice, but it has a use.
Post automatically merged:
Beyond my thoughts, there is a lot of good advice already present here. I definitely agree with doing some self-dyscipline through Bardon.
Lots of excellent advice here. Perhaps my take is a gross oversimplification: know your priorities. Any Magick is only as good as the improvements it brings to your life. That process can be very slow, which is grounding in itself. You’re already applying LBPR as a coping skill. During reflection work, also revisit as often as possible why you’re engaging these works. The magical high is amazing, the emotional processing required. What do you need magic to do for you? (An entirely different conversation around reciprocity happens when you get to spirit relationships!)
1. Material Components. If you want to access XYZ spirit, power, whatever, do so through a physical object, spoken word, or something else that is NOT in your thoughts. Speak out loud. Do physical actions. Use material objects, tools, etc. This allows you to access magical activity when you want, and the way you want, rather than whenever it wants to come to you. No random thoughts, sensations, feelings, intuitions, any of that. See it, hear it, touch it, or forget it and regard it as bullshit. If it's real it will smack you in the face, if it does not, treat it as not real.
In other words, you must give yourself time to integrate what you learn and what you experience, lest it just be an experience and nothing more than that. You get to choose here, do you want to learn and grow as a result of this magickal path you are on? Or do you just wanna collect badges and experiences like a tourist?
Integration is a thing, and sometimes a few days without magick is exactly what we need. Everyone is different, but we ALL need time to process and integrate what we experience. All that psychology stuff isn't wasted here, its essential.
I might be going on personal guesswork here @Razzmatazz and I want to share a small personal anecdote and a more well-thought way I unwind and gain stability/regain my stability and sanity from magic.
One thing I noticed recently is that I have tendencies to overwork myself magically or push myself hard in multiple magical projects, and I personally wouldn't notice it. I think there's something about modern culture where we can lose ourselves in the sauce and keep pushing thinking that this is the "new norm" even when we lay down on floor our body start fizzling and twitching out all that tension and stress accumulated from practice. It always come to me in a wave of 3-4 months where in the end I would be working on pure momentum, my rituals, and daily prayers are executed but my body and mind are worn out and I am not able to get more out of what I am doing. Usually my friend W.F.(not this forum lol) would call me out and tell me to take a break. He even felt like LBRP was a coping method, a bad coping because it doesn't let you get used to the ground/mundane world and keep you somewhat lightly insulated instead of being able to handle the mundane world.
Now I am a lot better with snapping myself out of my magical workhorse mindset where I put myself under pressure to just keep going on and on my magical projects like there's no tomorrow. To synthesize Faria's and Fireborn's message into one, I would say do "mundane" material magic...more ritual baths, make herbal tea to calm you down, etc. I don't know if this would lead you to become more prone to putting yourself under more pressure but I think it is important to have something that relieve the pressure at least instantly.
I recommend personally to do the following Salt head wash alongside the Epsom/Psychic Tension bath. Outside of a certain procedure, I would recommend looking into ancestral veneration as the first thing to do @Yazata , @The God-King , Fork Nan Pwen( I don't know why I can't ping him lol) . The reason I recommend ancestral veneration and guardian angel as much as you can to give yourself at least 10-20 minutes everyday working with your ancestors and guardian angel is that I feel like you're lifting everything by yourself. You give the impression that you don't have a support-network of spirit and by tapping with your already connected spirits(ancestors/guardian angel) then you can wake up these helper spirits who would give you some shock-absorbing ability and you will be able to handle living more normally.
If you still feel like even with Ancestors and guardian angel you still feel the instability then I recommend putting some "anchors" in your room, it can be a perfume bottle, a flower/rose vase, a cross, tapestry, a hexagram, etc. You would need something physical to help you ground and often all of these I mentioned are subtle altars or feng shui modifiers haha. Try to make your bedroom and your house your point of reference to anchoring your life instead of the place where you destabilize your life.
One thing, a mineral oil rub is a good idea if you feel like...all of that fail. at least mineral oil is kinda an earth element rub, then pray to archangel Uriel or Sandalphon to ground you. Anyway honestly these are all suggestions and you're open to try them out or not. Sometime burning yourself out or as you said:
I decided to write this because ancestor veneration is both the most important and least practiced aspects of magic. People are too content to jump into spirit work without having, or knowing, the proper constitution to do so. They can neither interact with the spirit nor do they have spiritual...
Can someone give me more information on use of your Ancestors in your practice, and how to properly feed and water, and tend to the ancestors? I dont have voices urging me to worship them, but I would like to deviate an altar to dearly departed ancestors. Tips on altars for them would be a...
The following is an excerpt from my blog: The absolute foundation of your spirituality is your ancestry. They are the roots of the tree from which you have blossomed forth into this world. Within your veins flows the power of gained through the hardships your ancestors endured in life...
wizardforums.com
I did quote Draja's spiritual cleansing book again, but here goes:
Fenugreek Head Washing
Washing the head in a solution of fenugreek tea may frequently relieve brain fatigue and strong emotions such as deep feelings of grief and sorrow. This tea is made by adding a tablespoon of powdered fenugreek to two cups of hot water. The powder is stirred into the water, and the solution is then allowed to cool and reach room temperature. This head wash is then scrubbed into the head, much as a shampoo is applied when washing the hair.
Once the fenugreek tea is scrubbed into the head, it is allowed to sit on the head for at least five or ten minutes. Then it is rinsed off using cool water. The result of this head washing is always a clearing of the person’s mentation. The individual is able to think more clearly without being afflicted by the strong emotions previously felt. In addition, this head washing has the advantage of removing nagging and troubling random thoughts generated by these and other emotions.
Unlike some of the other practices suggested in these pages, I recommend that most people use a fenugreek head wash at least twice a year. Our modern life puts its share of stress and strains on us, and most of us do mental rather than physical work today. Because most of us work around people who all have their own emotional problems, it is to our advantage to “clear the decks,” so to speak, so that we are not dealing with any problems other than our own. Using a fenugreek head wash twice a year will keep our own mentation clean, reducing negative mental influence from others and allowing us to think more clearly. Salt Head Washing
When a person just can’t seem to “get it all together,” or when they have suddenly become “air-headed” and unable to think clearly about anything, they may need to have a salt head washing. This head washing is usually performed in conjunction with a salt rub, or a salt bath. If it is done with a bath, the bath water used is rubbed into the head, often along with an additional handful of salt. Like the fenugreek head washing, the salt head washing is also done by scrubbing the solution into the head, just like a shampoo is used when washing the hair.
This bath and head washing is used for grounding people who feel disconnected, unable to think clearly at all, or who act as if they are “lost in space.” Use two pounds of salt to a tub of water and scrub the body thoroughly, as well as vigorously washing the head using an additional handful of salt and the bath water. If only a head washing is desired, add as much salt as can be dissolved in two cups of water and rub this solution thoroughly into the head. Once the person’s head has been scrubbed with the saltwater solution, it may be rinsed away.
Psychic Tension Bath
This bath also has a reputation for healing. It is made with Epsom salts. Mix:
¼ cup Epsom salt
1 cup bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
1 tablespoon salt (use either sea or table salt)
This bath should be taken without soap. Simply soak in it for ten to twenty minutes. It helps release both physical and psychic tension, as well as promoting a general physical healing of the body.
If I would feel so shitty on days not doing LRBP like you mentioned, I would go for days without magic and look in the mirror to find out the why. In the why is a lesson not learned to be found. If you find out the why and have processed that, the magic is not addictive anymore. I can't decide for you, but I think it is worth while to confront yourself. And yes, that can be painfull and confronting. But avoiding the shitty feeling of doing not magic by doing magic is in fact escapism.
I still think that every practioner of magic should have sober days/ only have days with mundane tasks. Otherwise magic starts to control you instead of the other way around...... You have to know and remember who you are without doing magic, always!........ I have seen people falling over the edge because of avoiding the shitty feeling of not doing magic by doing magic. Magic can be as addictive as sugar, alcohol and drugs.
(For the rest: others gave you lots of good advice)
Making Kala First let me say that I am not Feri. With that out of the way: In Feri-Witchcraft there's a (daily) cleansing ritual called “making Kala”. According to the Hawaiian dictionary, the word means “To loosen, untie, free, release, remove, unburden, absolve, let go, acquit, take off...
To offset , integrate, and contain impossible and desirable weirdness from my practices , I tend maintain a very norm-core professional personality. I 'ground' not with more esoterica , but instead do charity work, have normie freinds, tend a garden, pay taxes, and talk with the neighbors.
I adopted this apprach pretty early on from reading D.T. Suzuki’s description of Zen monks. He said the practice would form almost what could be thought of as a second personality - one that appears along with the first “lower” personality. Zen is very forgiving of “flaws” in that first, baseline, everyday personality. So monks are allowed to be grumpy, mean, or otherwise flawed people and still be recognized as spiritually accomplished.
Contrast this with what I think of as 'lifestyle occultism' you see in modern paganism, LHP systems, and others, where everyone is encouraged to permanently adopt, dress, or organize their thoughts around their alternate magical or spiritual personality. Going hardcore on totalizing theosis (mystical practices) can work, but they invite counter-resistance from your inner complexes and knots, as well as invite a social counter-reaction that hits when you feel most vulnerable and off-balance. I feel the slow and steady method of water wearing away the stone of zazen is probably safer. But one should go a bit nuts on occasion.
Where the edgelord hardcore ideas we can pretty much blame on Crowley, Gurdjieff, and the MK-Ultra-to-Marvel movies who all say you must suffer to awaken your “metahuman superpowers” or whatever. Crowley recommended slashing your forearms with a razor if you had a break in your meditation. He thought your Nephesh (animal self / body consciousness) was an ox that must be punished until it behaves.
More gentle mystical practices should be separate from magic, in my view, if only to make a kind and low-key space for them. Sorcery is hardcore, but there is no need to attack yourself.
And then this.
A bit of levity, I hope, but I have seen this far too often after magic and occultism became popular.
To offset , integrate, and contain impossible and desirable weirdness from my practices , I tend maintain a very norm-core professional personality. I 'ground' not with more esoterica , but instead do charity work, have normie freinds, tend a garden, pay taxes, and talk with the neighbors.
There is a, not only mundane, reason why there is ORA et LABORA in the monastic life. The grounding part (labora, work) is a necessity for the spiritual part (Ora).
I am with you in grounding: singing in 2 choirs, seriously playing baroque music, have a garden, do long walks with the dog, working/cleaning for old/disabled people, take care for people, go camping with family etc........ Having a 'normal' life is a good antidote. For me it is a good thing to have days where I worked myself drenched in sweat and be tired as hell at the end of my day because of cleaning 3 houses, practiced oboe 2 hours and have a intensive rehearsal in de evening with good talks in the break with my choir friends. (tomorrow will be such a day)
Hey, new to this forum, sorry if there's already a thread dedicated to this but I'm doing a quick poat before work to ask: what techniques are there to maintain sanity and stability in ceremonial magick? I've been doing this only a few months, but I feel I've made a lot of progress. Unfortunately it's had an impact on my sense of stability. I only feel leveled out when I stop doing magick. Everything I do magickally lends itself to this wobbly, untethered state. This state lends itself towards the practice of magick, but it makes daily life difficult. People ask me how I'm doing and I just stare wide-eyed into the ether and try to collect myself enough to give a normal answer. Is there an initiated secret I'm missing that could help with this, or do I just need to invoke more earth or another grounding power?
Assuming you could respond normally in these situations before and it's the magick, there could be many factors leading to that feeling. Psychologically "normal answer" suggests some perceived safety issue(real or imagined) making you freeze before sharing. Maybe something as simple as a lack of confidence to communicate what you're experiencing since you're new and haven't established context with the magical world in ways to share your experience acceptably with immediate confidence. Experience will teach that.
The pause could even be a sign of beginning to filter your behavior through the lens of newly developing ethics that are sprouting up from your work as you begin to Hermetically align with the spiritual world.
Also on the 'energy' side, feeling a state like an unstable gyroscope when doing magick seems like the symptoms of unbalanced elements.
Did you introduce yourself to the Elements with an initiation ritual including an aim of balance?
Your intuition to suggest grounding esoterically with regard to your previous work would seem to be on the right track. Do you trust it?
That could involve expanding consciousness to encompass Earth as it expresses combinations of elements in daily and seasonal cycles. Coloured candles and a circle help represent, compartmentalize and differentiate time and season. Some decorations. Directional invocations and accoutrements.
Afterward when responding to those questions, an alignment of initiated thought with the natural world will provide means to condense mystical thoughts into something that isn't arbitrary to share in social situations with immediate confidence that they are coherent.
