balancing daily life with magical practice

How do you balance your everyday mundane life with your magical practice?

qwzxas said:

How do you balance your everyday mundane life with your magical practice?

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I do my best to merge them into one whole: my life.

I don t separate the two. My “mundane life” is where the results of my work manifest. Magic is not something I step into — it s something I operate through

To quote Vila from Blake's 7: "A thief isn't what I do; it's what I am"

Routine. I was always told that this was bad from the beginning, because "routine" can be associated with something taken for granted (99.999... % of the "mundane"). Nevertheless, daily observance of certain rites, a regular schedule based on symbolic actions and an observance of cyclic time as opposed to flat linear time adds a magical purpose to the "mundane". Gradually, the mundane can be recognized as part of the ritual, even if it is boring, plain and a pain in the ass.

Magic is life. Life is a event of rituals. Rituals is practice.

You are using magic everyday unknowingly.

Dènye Patwon said:

Magic is life. Life is a event of rituals. Rituals is practice.

You are using magic everyday unknowingly.

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I see magic as an unexpected consequence of normal human consciousness; one that everyone has, but few harness, like many human abilities. It becomes part of your life because it has (unknowingly as you say) always been part of your life.

Concentrate on basic magical practices which will then affect mundane life in more ways than one, and in my experience, my mundane life just got thrown all over the place, from work to friends as my life started to change.

They are one and the same, one should not be concentrated upon at the expense of the other.
Spiritual life is a blend of ingredients. If you are the correct path for you, then all will fall into place naturally.

There are many angles to answer that question.

If you talk about hard practice, i can't imagine going through my day without visualisation, blessings, breathing....

When it comes to life philosophy, i just not to lose myself in delusions.

I have specific practises that I have integrated into my day over time.
It would feel weird now if I did not do them. I have practises to start my day and some to end the day. The end ones especially actually help my sleep routine. So they are practically beneficial too.

But in dreams...

I think there are sub-subjects in your question.

First, like everyone else, I try to include my practice in my 'mundane' life, or more accurately try to blend them so that it's impossible to distinguish one from the other. For example: eating could be mundane but taking 3seconds to do a mini ritual of thankfulness or even a healing visualization before eating makes it magical. Same for cleaning the floor or anything else you do during your day.

Second point is the physicality of things/ tools/ movements that can or can not be accepted in certain situations. As a professional closeted witch I have come up with several strategies to disguise tools as other tools, replace them, or simply use my mind's eye only when necessary. The key here is training and creativity + some testing.
You can do a lot with next to nothing, actually you can do anything, it's just a question of preference (and a little bit of training let's be honest).
I would recommend an e-book reader (with password), paper and pen, and a spoon or an otherwise acceptable metallic tool for scraping/ banishing/ cutting through as starters. Lighters and candles are usually viewed as quite neutral but again I don't know which context you are in.

So to come back to your question you can also use mundane objects for your magic where the goals are to impact your 'mundane' life. One day you may wake up, or more likely realize during a meditation that nothing is mundane anymore in your life. You're a magus Qwzxas.

I don’t really separate it from daily life anymore. I keep it simple: setting intentions, staying mindful, maybe pulling a quick tarot card here and there.

That way it feels natural instead of something I have to make extra time for.

Like all things they are connected. I use my magical practice to influence my "mundane" life. I wake up and write whatever I can remember in my journal, followed by a banishing ritual, both of these help to clear my mind and eliminate any stress I'm still holding. Then I do a divination for the day, this also goes in the journal. Then it's 30 minutes of meditation on what I want to accomplish for the day, then shower and off to work.

During my lunch break I got to the gym and read some esoteric material on the treadmill. Mind, body, and spirit. My entire morning ritual takes less than an hour and makes me feel ready to Conquer the day.

For more involved rituals I usually wait until after I've had dinner, that's usually when I'm feeling most energized. I suggest treating your magical work as you would any other hobby, make a little time for it whenever you can and you'll find that not only is it an enjoyable activity but a fulfilling one!

Love the practical advice about disguising tools. It gave me the idea of using a mundane mug which is completely acceptable at work. Thanks, Diamond-otherkin!

I like your schedule, crooktooth. Practical scheduling and good habits are an area to work on for me. I usually use a calendar program to keep track of important times and schedule workings so I make them a priority. Also nice to add little lower priority things since most programs make scheduling easier than the days of pen and paper.

Coincidentally or perhaps intentionally I happened to be reading Between Spaces by the Templum Nigri Solis at the gym yesterday and came across this very relevant page.



The full book is available in HoldAll's collection:

Thebes said:

Love the practical advice about disguising tools. It gave me the idea of using a mundane mug which is completely acceptable at work. Thanks, Diamond-otherkin!

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This is exactly the spirit! Worked great for us and the community around us.

Some of us had a different perception of the world from birth, a different reality. We had to then learn and understand what most of the rest of society believed and experienced as reality, and learn to live with them. People may call what you do, believe in, or practice, quirks or eccentricities, then they become afraid of you for what you can do, and you never actually fit in. However, knowing and living a different reality doesn't feed you, or stop your bleeding, or magically supply you with all the social nonsense people believe to be necessary to live and function in this dimension. Even magick isn't paying the bills for most practitioners. Knowing the borders of this dimension, and how this place operates, gives a clearer perspective that includes having to feed this body, dealing with all things that exist here, etc. Even more important is knowing the limitations and borders of whatever practices you are doing. Expectations are sometimes not aligned with any reality, in this dimension or others. Too many people think they might be able to achieve X-Men status because of what they are doing, yet they can't even manage to show up to work on time or pay the bills responsibly. That shows imbalance and being too aloof to function.
Look around at nature, it is pretty harsh. People have designed this fake society that hides from nature and the rules, but is very fragile. It still isn't anything real compared to what life actually is.
People mostly operate from a self-centered perspective, in a world of greed and division. Knowing that can go a long way to understanding the fake world they have created, and are desperately trying to maintain, however unreal it actually is. Taking part in that is playing your role like a puppet in a theater, and all of the nonsense of this fake world makes more sense that way. The tragic part is that this fake society is now forced on people, and many of them can feel how unnatural it is. It can be soul crushing. People actually believe that these fake societies are a real thing that isn't on life support 2/47.
I have always been of the opinion that I don't give a flying carpet what people think about what I practice or do, because it is seriously none of their business. The main thing is energetic clarity, which helps to explain why some practices don't work the way you wish they did, and keeps your head level and focused on what does work and what is actually important.
Having a clear head means you understand the real and actual limitations of whatever practices you participate in, and the intricacies and relationships of those practices interacting with this reality. You have to know the borders and limits of each dimension, and where they actually interact and intersect for real, and not where you want them to intersect or interact. So the difference between wishful thinking and fantasy, and the real deal. This dimension and this reality do exist, and this place has rules, and limits, and is one tough and cruel place made softer by those who joined together to survive as a society. Know which of the rules can be manipulated with which form of practice, and where the magick happens, how and where it connects to this plane, and then survive in this dimension in the body you have been born into that allows you to participate at all.
The current solar activity is one of those odd things, where not understanding what it can disrupt and block causes people to think they are not practicing properly or otherwise doing something wrong. It should slow down and end over the next 4 years, with the sun possibly flipping the magnetic poles again. That should make some things easier and we should see more results if people are patient and practice away until the restrictions are lifted. Until then, keep smiling and knowing there is more than this.