What actually makes a ritual “work”?

[fefe137]

Hey everyone,
I’m very new to occultism and I’ve recently started learning about Hermeticism, Kabbalah and ceremonial magick.
Something I’ve been wondering about is what practitioners actually believe makes a ritual work.
For example, in rituals such as the LBRP there are specific gestures, visualizations, divine names, directions, symbols and correspondences. How important is each part? Is the power mainly in the symbols and correspondences themselves, in the magician’s intention and will, in the entities or forces being invoked, or in the combination of all of these?
I’m also curious whether different occult traditions understand this completely differently.
Since I’m just starting out, I’d love to hear how more experienced practitioners understand what is actually happening during a ritual.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Everything in the ritual goes towards convincing you that it's going to work, and to occupy your conscious mind while doing so. Magic needs to be programmed in at a deep level; the level just above how you move your arms and legs without thinking about it.

 

[freed-mana]

Ritual, to me, is about increasing coherence -- the ritual has worked if this goal has been met. Take that as you will.

 

[AbammonTheGreat]

Magic.

 

[Sirius]

Everything in the ritual goes towards convincing you that it's going to work, and to occupy your conscious mind while doing so. Magic needs to be programmed in at a deep level; the level just above how you move your arms and legs without thinking about it.

Robert, I think what you said about the magic being programmed at a deep level is very interesting. Are you saying the “programming” of the magic must reach the subconscious? If so, how do you suppose all the different steps of a given ritual facilitate that? Or is it one of those unknowables?

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Robert, I think what you said about the magic being programmed at a deep level is very interesting. Are you saying the “programming” of the magic must reach the subconscious? If so, how do you suppose all the different steps of a given ritual facilitate that? Or is it one of those unknowables?

The way I look at it, the mechanism of magic is the same mechanism by which you, say, ride a bike. When you first learn to ride it, you're having to think about it all the time, and you wobble all over the place. When you've learned, it becomes second nature, and you hardly think about it at all, to the point where it's possible to arrive at your destination and have no memory of the journey because your brain just switched off.

To give a different example, choosing between eating a pear or an orange. You don't have to think out the way you reach out for it, only about which one you want.

Magic uses the same mechanism as you use to choose and carry out your choice, only there is no physical 'reaching out'.

A scientist called William Grey Walter invented a thing he called 'the wish switch' where he could detect when people wanted to do something using electrodes on the scalp. He gave them a button and told them to press it to change images on a screen. But the button wasn't connected to anything - the machine changed the image when it got the correct signal from the brain. His subjects trained themselves to change the images without pressing the useless button - just by thinking they were going to press the button.

This is probably the easiest way to think about the process. Here's a link to the article in Popular Science:

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Post automatically merged: Wednesday at 7:14 AM

I forgot to answer your second question

As I see it, it is something in the nature of belief that does the programming. You have to believe the thing at a deep level; the kind of level where if someone said something you believed in was rubbish, you would say "no" without even thinking about it.

The purpose of any ritual is to convince you that it's true.

 

[Kleidos]

Intent.

 

[OberonFromTheHills]

I would say magick is like singing and the ritual is like singing a particular song.

You can sing well, improvise and get a good result. Singing an already made song is using a pattern.

Same for cooking and preparing a particular recipe. You can make good food from scratch. Using a recipe will give you a result that was already decided, well know, with structure and little room for chaos.

But you can also sing a song and make a recipe without having singing or cooking abilities/training. You will get a result but you can also miss it all.

 

[julio]

The ability to call forth spirits. Knowledge of what materia to use in spells. Knowledge of when and how to collect those. Knowledge of magical timing.

 

[Kleidos]

To elaborate :
Magick in Theory and Practice (Part III of Magick, Book 4 / Liber ABA, 1929)

“Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.”

and so the effective use of The Will ( intent) is paramount.

If the intent is confused, divided, or opposed to your True Will, Crowley says the operation will tend to fail or produce conflict, because “a man whose conscious will is at odds with his True Will is wasting his strength.”

 

[ZSLMH]

The intention. You can succeed just saying, "xyz is done" and believe it, and thus make it so. Most people will struggle to do that. The pageantry we often do is more for our own benefit, than any spirit we might call. That said, that doesn't mean the extra steps aren't important. If anything I dress things up more now than ever, but I have succeeded purely on intent many times. No candles, no incense, just will. The more I learn, the more I respect the extra stuff, because it adds meaning to me.

 

[Pneuma_Purifier]

When healing is applied to the energy body, it initiates an activation that manifests immediately in the physical body.

 

[juji]

For some reason I started to understand this recently while I was reading chapman's books. He says that you decide that the outcome you want is the same of the ritual. It is similar to a math equation to me, with the x... then you perform the ritual and it is done. I dont know why but it clicked something. Probably because to me math is an occult science...

 

[inner888]

It's about belief, vibration and most importantly sincerity. Act sincerely will overcome blocks.

 

[Frater R.P.G.]

@juji mentioned Alan Chapman above and I second this recommendation, in particular his essay "Camel Rides Again!". Belief, energy, spirits, subconscious, trance, correspondences - all these are but different models of magic and while they DO work, they are not the essence of why magic works. The chaos magic practice of sigils is a perfect example to disprove many of these - it doesn't require belief as such (you're often recommended to forget about the sigil, after all), they don't require any energy work nor spirits to be invoked, and the sign is ultimately completely arbitrary so it doesn't really require any correspondences. Now, many explain that sigils need to be charged or entred into your subconscious, typically by attaining some form of trance state/gnosis, but those are likewise not always needed for magic. Many simple methods don't require any changes of consciousness, like for example a voodoo doll - and yet they work! So all those things work, but none of them are strictly necessary.

Chapman reaches the conclusion, that the essence of magic is truth and that truth is experiential. As a magician, you can ascribe meaning or intent to various actions and by experiencing those actions you transform the intent into reality. If I decide that burning a piece of paper means "I will travel to Japan" and then I burn that piece of paper, thus experiencing it, I cause the trip to manifest. Of course, this won't often take place instantly, because the manifestation depends on the available means. For example, it will be difficult to manifest winning the lottery if you never buy a lottery ticket.

Anyway, this is the gist of it, I highly recommend you read Chapman's work.