What is the essence of real magick?

[wealthywiz]

I’ve been reading doing research and I’ve came to understand the science behind how everything is connected n how every atom, being and the very fabric of the universe is and is being created by “God” but I feel lost when it comes to working magic, is it possible I’m not ready or am I going about it completely overestimating the potential of spell casting?

 

[stalkinghyena]

You already got the key:

working magic

The emphasis should be on the word W-O-R-K.
As far as qualification of self generated effort and the potential of "spell casting", you can think of in cumulative terms. It's an active knowledge. The question is where to jump in, but the only meaningful action is just to jump in. I have always found power in the word "experiment", but that means you have to step beyond hypothesis and be willing to burn your fingers a couple of times.
There's a lot of faith involved. I don't mean that in the sense of a consciously held belief but a dedicated series of actions bound to the will to act.

every atom

The thing a lot of folks don't realize is that Democritus just threw stuff out there to get some wheels turning, then he took a break. Whatever he said about the "good life", no one gets to be lazy. He was a sneaky bastard.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I’ve been reading doing research and I’ve came to understand the science behind how everything is connected n how every atom, being and the very fabric of the universe is and is being created by “God” but I feel lost when it comes to working magic, is it possible I’m not ready or am I going about it completely overestimating the potential of spell casting?

My advice would be to think of magic as 'being lucky on purpose'. You need proper intent, you need to believe in what you're doing, do it, and don't tell anyone until it's complete. As Eliphas Levi put it: "To know, to will, to dare, and be silent".

Crowley defined it as "causing change to occur in accordance with the Will" and this is quite nifty as it applies to both magical and non-magical acts.

As for 'connection', it's the connections that allow us to live in a mostly consistent universe, and, ironically enough, it's the places where we aren't yet connected that are open to magical manipulation. At least, this is one of the major conclusions that I've come to after thirty plus years of studying the scientific basis of magic.

 

[Anziel_Merkaba]

Magic is basically all about will and intent. Since the world is only as real as one perceives it to be, one must have the will to enact their intent upon the world.

In Hermeticism, one of the first things you learn is "The All is the Mind", which in a twisted sort of way essentially means that what you think and believe will happen if you think and believe as so. This essentially means all the "peace, vibes, and affirmations" types of practitioners are technically correct, but they have no understanding of why they are correct. Of course while this means a purely mental form of practice is possible, most practitioners still find worth in the act and show of ritual work. Personally I find that the style of practice you will take heavily depends on your starting point in a lot of ways, as I started as a know-nothing chaos magician before I came to realize that chaos magic is just diet Hermeticism.

In any case, you can't go wrong with improving your abilities to focus and visualize, even if you prefer a more physical practice. Here's some simple exercises that can help you.

 

[Ziran]

"What is the essence of real magick?"​

The essence of real magick is manifestation of will. Manifestation is making a vessel. It's counter intuitive, because, the vessel is an outer garment, an external dimension. Essence is almost always assumed to be an inner or interior dimension. But here, it's the opposite. These sort of inversions are common when working with divinity/infinity.

I’ve been reading doing research and I’ve came to understand the science behind how everything is connected n how every atom, being and the very fabric of the universe is and is being created by “God”

agreed

but I feel lost when it comes to working magic

ok. please share a little more? what have you tried?

is it possible I’m not ready or am I going about it completely overestimating the potential of spell casting?

you sound ready to me. In my experience, most who are in your position, are not making a "vessel" for their craft. By "vessel" I mean a sort of metaphorical "lightning-rod". They're able to produce a sort of divine pressure, cultivating their will, but not much comes of it without making / manifesting a "vessel" for their craft, here-and-now, in the material world. Without this, the spell that's cast doesn't have a ... "place to land".

 

[IllusiveOwl]

A few people have mentioned the Hermetic concept of "The All", and you're touching on that with what you said about the "Atoms" that make up everything, the scientific "Quantum field" that underlies all reality, the singular substance that everything can be dissolved into, where all identity, individuality, time & space just kind of become inapplicable. You're right in thinking that this insight is key to magic and it's application.

You can use all kinds of different words to describe our situation, but really everyone is living in the same universe and trying to explain the same thing, some come to different conclusions and some have more success than others, but everyone is talking about the same Source. I prefer the Hermetic phrasing, calling "The All" the underlying field that everything exists within, "Mind". What you are, your body, mind, and spirit are all manifestations within Mind of The All, all is Mind, there aren't two minds, you're just a little bubble in the infinite ocean, you yourself are intimately tied to this all encompassing mind, your mind and god's mind are one, similar to how Macbeth and Shakespeare's mind are one. How does this play into the application of magic?

Well, your ego, your body, your thoughts, all of them are vibratory fluctuations within the mind of The All, the only thing that makes you a conscious being is something beyond that, your Awareness, this is what Meister Eckhart was talking about when he said "The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love." In Hermeticism this "One eye" is called your Masculine Mind, where your Will resides and sends directives to your ego and mind, sort of like how you can "steer" the directions of your thoughts, but your thoughts sort of produce themselves. Magic comes from the Will, this part of you that isn't controlled by the material will, by emotions, or thoughts, Advita Vedanta calls this entity the Observer.

There's a lot of delusion and fantasy in the esoteric because in reality there have been very few actual magicians and magical orders, for the most part it's lunatics LARPing and occasionally gaining success because they're close but not on the mark. There are a lot of well intending souls who shoot for the stars and hit the moon, becoming "more lucky" than others, but they're still not magicians. There are also many well meaning philanthropic souls who become Buddhist or Theosophical, and rather than enlivening their individuality, they submerge with The All and become living Angels serving its beautiful lovely Will.

Through meditation, you can discover the workings of your mind and your connection to the observer. You can discover the unconscious way you've been using your Will in life and begin to actively use it instead. This is pretty basic self-help stuff, the universe is magical and this counts as magic, but it doesn't make you a Magus. A metaphor for a Magus would be as if Macbeth sat down, recognized Shakespeare, and got into a very profitable alliance, bringing the below to the above, then the above down to the below. This unification, this alliance, is what The Great Work is, in this metaphor Shakespeare would be the Holy Guardian Angel.

I'm not saying you are God, but everything that you are exists within God, at the moment you're just a bundle of habits and passions, vices and virtues, with an empty void watching it all play out helplessly. You have to make the connections here yourself, but through Will, you can unite & subdue your psyche, Soul, and Mind to make that void within you a temple through which the Living God can reside and act through, nothing is lost here either because all of this is still taking place within the same universal mind you are in now, you just become aware of it. Through purification you subdue all your egoic habits that were never truly you to begin with, and make yourself an "Avatar" of the The All to a degree, a truly individual and unique being that is both God and not God. This being would be a Magician, and some people will call me delusional or a LARPer or insane, but with this union of the above and below, you could accomplish anything, the Mind of the All would be to your whim, and truly you would be able to wield the power of Magic.

I hope I've helped in answering your very complex question.

 

[HoldAll]

I think we need to distinguish between mysticism and applied magic here. Mystical insights are one thing but being able to actually exploit them is another - after all, science is full of examples where something should work in theory but doesn't in practice, or does work in practice and nobody has a clue why. What's so maddening here is that magic adds yet another dimension here, i.e. the subjective one: what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for the other under identical condition and following the same procedures, and the only way is to experiment and find out, like @stalkinghyena said. It's been said that you learn from your failures more than from your victories, so kudos to you for taking the subjective dimension into consideration at all instead of simply complaining that "magic doesn't work" like so many others. If you decide to continue 'troubleshooting' your unsuccessful spell instead of giving up on magic completely, you may very well arrive at the conclusion of not being ready like you already mentioned.

Damon Brand said somewhere that the requirement of proper training stressed by more traditional occult authors (I think he meant mainly Bardon's formidable "Initiation into Hermetics") has driven more rookies away from magic than anything else, with daily meditation probably being the biggest hurdle; consequently Brand maintains that everybody can do magic without preparation which is perhaps a crucial reason why his books are so successful, and why many modern books taking the same line achieve (undeserved) bestseller status. Conservative authors scorn that low-effort attitude and are fond of invoking clichéd analogies involving mastery of athletic disciplines or musical instruments in support of their old-school stance. Who is right? You won't find out until you try. And continue troubleshooting in case you fail.

In his book "Advanced Magic for Beginners", Alan Chapman claims "The truth is experiential". All we can do is test magical paradigms, collect empirical data and then - just maybe - arrive at some rough guidelines applicable exclusively to ourselves. For example, we may notice that rituals for a given purpose performed on a certain weekday won't work, that the phases of the moon (or even astrological conditions) should be taken into consideration as well, that one-pointed ritual awareness is a major factor for a successful outcome while scatter-brained absentmindedness will negatively impact on it - or that these circumstances don't affect your magic at all or only to a certain degree. You won't know for sure until you try (and continue troubleshooting, of course).

What must be extremely frustrating for rookies is an initial lack of success in combination with the slowly dawning realisation that it's not so easy after all, no matter what those chirpily 'empowering' authors say. Draja Mickaharic claims somewhere that he could teach anyone to find a $100 bill on the street, only… it would take about four months of diligent training to have that ability. So is all this study, the meditation, breathwork, visualisation stuff, etc. (and let's not forget the troubleshooting!) really worth it when all you want is a raise and get laid? I think this is the point where at least 95% of all newcomers drop out. In my opinion, only those will stick with magic who harbour a burning passion for it like @IllusiveOwl said in this thread, who want to find out what makes the universe tick (in addition to becoming rich and having lots of sex, of course ) and who are prepared to sacrifice some of their spare time and put in some effort in pursuit of this goal. Additionally, a strong interest in self-development definitely helps.

Old grimoires frequently refer to their magical operations as experimenta. Experiments can fail, and in such instances… back to the drawing board, it's troubleshooting time again. Enfuriating maybe, but it helps to regard magic as an adventure and a journey of discovery instead of a way of just 'getting stuff'.