What are the limitations of magick and esoteric practice in terms of tangible and credible resukts

Dear Dragonborn,

Generally I see only two types of magical working. That first one is probalistic working. It is not tangible at all. It increases the probability of the event you intent occurs naturally. Another one is deterministic and tangible, but it is very difficult to practice and let alone find teachers who are excellent in this. I am under the assumption that you are doing probabalistic form. Well, since it is probalistic, it merely increases probability of the outcome that might naturally happens.

Dragonborn said:

I have tried every ritual i could to acquire just this book back to no avail.

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It's too specific. In my community it's taught: "Don't test God..." in reference to a story in the bible, but, in modern terms, magic operates at the quantum scale. Being specific triggers the "observer effect". The outcome defaults back to mundane material cause and effect mixed with bits of random chaos.

Executing a ritual is like seeding the clouds. It's operating within a highly general abstract realm.

Dragonborn said:

This question has been bothering me for awhile as a result of multiple failed rites. The last straw was when more than three months ago my bag was stolen and in it was my book of shadows. I have tried every ritual i could to acquire just this book back to no avail. I tried to console myself and say maybe it was something my spirit needed to let go off and i tried new rituals from seeking contact with spirits and exercises to improve my spiritual connectivity like hallowing new runes with my blood but nothing changes there’s no reaction and once more i feel more isolated than ever. I try to read magic journal to see where i went wrong and maybe find memories that remind me that it really does work but it is filled with attempt after attempt with no result. And after taking a break from the magical practice i realize that all the things i normally would cast a spell for or seek help from a spirit are the same without all the practice. For now i can only reach to the conclusion that the psychological system of magic might be the only system that delivers what it promises working well within the boundaries it has set which is its influence on the mind. And now i ask still hoping for more, can magic actually cause a change other than mental or psychological to occur? Even if there were to exist a plane beyond the physical why should it matter to a physical being who has no means of accessing it? I am happy to receive any advice or opinion that is contrary to mine out of hope that I am wrong.

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I feel you man. For me personally the magick that causes the most powerful objective change in my life have been planetary rites.
Except that change is not always what we might want or expect.

for example, i was recently involved romantically with a girl i knew I probably shouldnt mess with, just because its a toxic dynamic but very strong attraction if anyone can relate to that…lmao

Anyway, a few days ago i did a saturn rite to help me with discipline in a few particular arenas of my life.

well a day later, this romantic situation abruptly ended. It took me a minute to realize that it was the saturn rite. It was a tough lesson, one that i didnt necessarily want to learn but nonetheless I did grow as a result of it.

just sharing this experience to remind you that magick is real, it works…but not always the way we want it to.
in the famous words of Mick Jagger

“You cant always get what you want, but if you try sometimes…you might find….
YOU GET WHAT YOU NEED!”

IMHO you need some kind of power to fuel your magick.
If you don't have inner power you'll need external fuel source. These seem to be:
1. Herbs (think hoodoo) and minerals
2. Astrological timing (traditional astrology only)
3. Spirits
Since you don't have your own inner power you'll have to stick to the rules when dealing with these things. Follow whatever grimoire or instruction book as closely as you can.
Best of luck.

Dragonborn said:

I have tried every ritual i could to acquire just this book back to no avail.

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Let's start here. In as much detail as possible, describe exactly what rites you did, their sources in the literature and lore of magic (or which practiced expert instructed you in them), and exactly what you did to do them.

My suggestion is that your techniques might be non-effective. A huge amount of what gets sold to people as the popular, standard, approved, or most-discussed methods are total crap and have zero practical value. It's like the C-vax, you have to be that one guy who says "You are all wrong." Just forget about what authors say about what you do and don't need. Look at the actual sources of your rites and do that, forget what anyone else says about it. If it says you need gorilla teeth, get the goddamn gorilla teeth. It's very likely that the reason your stuff isn't working is that you're doing something that you CAN do. Do what you cannot do, what only a superhuman freak hell-bent on his goal would do. That's where the magic is.

If you believe it will work, it will work. If you don't believe it will work, you are correct.

What does it take to believe? This is where Magick is.

aeonvirelith5060 said:

deterministic and tangible

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Andromalius.

Had some incidental stuff stolen maybe twice over the years.

One time perp was arrested and my stuff returned, along with other people's stuff the police found in a storage facility where they stored the stuff they had stolen around the Seattle area.

The other time I guess they felt so guilty they came back and left it on my porch.

I did not tell them what way I wanted the stuff returned I really did not care, but it' generally good practice to give them as wide a range of possible avenues. Just tell them not to kill the person. Proportional response only.

If I was using New Thought, same thing. I'd just use my imagination to see a FPS video game scene with my two hands in front of me using or holding my returned stuff.

aeonvirelith5060 said:

Dear Dragonborn,

Generally I see only two types of magical working. That first one is probalistic working. It is not tangible at all. It increases the probability of the event you intent occurs naturally. Another one is deterministic and tangible, but it is very difficult to practice and let alone find teachers who are excellent in this. I am under the assumption that you are doing probabalistic form. Well, since it is probalistic, it merely increases probability of the outcome that might naturally happens.

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Thanks for the reply. I actually agree with this coz two of the ways i believed magic worked was like a game where you have critical chance or buffs which increase the probability of something happening and is probably why for a long time I loved crafting talismans coz i felt they always worked when i applied them to more general results like success or victory runes. The other method that i thought of stems from the concept of Kia and chaos where I always believed that chaos was an allegory for the collective unconscious and by setting an intention into the collective unconscious it would be reflected in people's actions in order to reach a certain outcome

More than likely it's a mix of many factors working together in the case of Magick.
But the only way to really know is to do the Magick yourself. Try. You'll fail, that's guaranteed but failure is the doorway to success when you keep trying and honing your own practice. Sooner or later you WILL get results.

Faria said:

Let's start here. In as much detail as possible, describe exactly what rites you did, their sources in the literature and lore of magic (or which practiced expert instructed you in them), and exactly what you did to do them.

My suggestion is that your techniques might be non-effective. A huge amount of what gets sold to people as the popular, standard, approved, or most-discussed methods are total crap and have zero practical value. It's like the C-vax, you have to be that one guy who says "You are all wrong." Just forget about what authors say about what you do and don't need. Look at the actual sources of your rites and do that, forget what anyone else says about it. If it says you need gorilla teeth, get the goddamn gorilla teeth. It's very likely that the reason your stuff isn't working is that you're doing something that you CAN do. Do what you cannot do, what only a superhuman freak hell-bent on his goal would do. That's where the magic is.

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I hope i got your question correct and I'll try to give information on what sources i used. For this specific result of getting my item back, the first rite I did was the summoning of Umu Dhabrutu using the grimoire of Tiamat by Asenath Mason since at the time I was practicing that path. Having had my grimoire stolen I was pretty pissed and just wanted to straight up curse the thief and use an entity that could bring him out of hiding or at least confirm his location. After some waiting with no results, I opted to use a tailor made rite that was in the grimoire but i still had memory of and I can say I believe had worked in multiple other occasions evident in my journal. The second ritual was a planetary ritual in which i first summoned the Olympic spirit of mars,Phaleg, then requested the audience of Andromalius since the goetic spirit is ascribed to mars, with the request of punishing the thief and returning my stolen belongings. The ritual used here was mainly derived or inspired by Practical Planetary Magick by David Rankine and Sorita d'este as well as Planetary Magick by Denning & Philips

MorganBlack said:

Andromalius.

Had some incidental stuff stolen maybe twice over the years.

One time perp was arrested and my stuff returned, along with other people's stuff the police found in a storage facility where they stored the stuff they had stolen around the Seattle area.

The other time I guess they felt so guilty they came back and left it on my porch.

I did not tell them what way I wanted the stuff returned I really did not care, but it' generally good practice to give them as wide a range of possible avenues. Just tell them not to kill the person. Proportional response only.

If I was using New Thought, same thing. I'd just use my imagination to see a FPS video game scene with my two hands in front of me using or holding my returned stuff.

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And were both cases through evoking Andromalius?

Fr. Maximagus said:

I feel you man. For me personally the magick that causes the most powerful objective change in my life have been planetary rites.
Except that change is not always what we might want or expect.

for example, i was recently involved romantically with a girl i knew I probably shouldnt mess with, just because its a toxic dynamic but very strong attraction if anyone can relate to that…lmao

Anyway, a few days ago i did a saturn rite to help me with discipline in a few particular arenas of my life.

well a day later, this romantic situation abruptly ended. It took me a minute to realize that it was the saturn rite. It was a tough lesson, one that i didnt necessarily want to learn but nonetheless I did grow as a result of it.

just sharing this experience to remind you that magick is real, it works…but not always the way we want it to.
in the famous words of Mick Jagger

“You cant always get what you want, but if you try sometimes…you might find….
YOU GET WHAT YOU NEED!”

Click to expand...

I hope you don't mind me asking what your source for planetary rites are or any books that you would recommend

Dragonborn said:

And were both cases through evoking Andromalius?

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Yes, but this time was later in my magical career when I realized I could call them using Conjure / Spiritualist techniques , if wedded to classic ritual forms of Goetia.

Both time the workings were something a bit more New World Sorcery (should I even uppercase that? I never know) ... like this (below) ... but with more trance. Even the trance is not necessary. But probably good to have early on. And there is still a place for the classic rituals.

Dragonborn said:

For this specific result of getting my item back, the first rite I did was the summoning of Umu Dhabrutu using the grimoire of Tiamat by Asenath Mason since at the time I was practicing that path. ...The second ritual was a planetary ritual in which i first summoned the Olympic spirit of mars,Phaleg, then requested the audience of Andromalius since the goetic spirit is ascribed to mars, with the request of punishing the thief and returning my stolen belongings. The ritual used here was mainly derived or inspired by Practical Planetary Magick by David Rankine and Sorita d'este as well as Planetary Magick by Denning & Philips

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OK then! So the problem is easily identified.

Understand that these authors are prescribing something they made to repackage many volumes of learning into one volume of instruction. The techniques and strategies they give you will represent their own biases.

I would like to say something kind about Asenath Mason's writings, but have never read them. Maybe they offer something substantial? To me it looks like a lot of dark fluff, maybe to be revisited when it can be seen in proper context.

The bottom line on anything Arbatel is that there is no stable coherent technique applicable to any of it. It is a skeleton that you can adapt into a variety of magical works, but you are more or less on your own in designing that work, and the chance of error in that is high.

The whole Goetia thing is its own system, with its own internal rules and restrictions, and it doesn't work very well when pared-down into something that isn't a royal pain. It is not something that can be adapted to general planetary magic.

All that said, you are on the right track with looking at planetary magic. Theft and recompense are people-related goals and planetary magic is people-related work. And your goal is not entirely impossible - my first magical experiment was also to return stolen goods - I am only suggesting that the way you're attempting it is misguided. It is easy to get frustrated if you think you're doing it right when you're not.

All of those systems have a huge amount done in the background before any kind of result ought to be expected. Either fulfill those actual requirements, some of which are not written or well known, or not known at all, or use something that you feel confident in doing. Don't take any one or two authors' word on anything, but build your work from a broad foundation of learning and experiment.

Dragonborn said:

I hope i got your question correct and I'll try to give information on what sources i used. For this specific result of getting my item back, the first rite I did was the summoning of Umu Dhabrutu using the grimoire of Tiamat by Asenath Mason since at the time I was practicing that path. Having had my grimoire stolen I was pretty pissed and just wanted to straight up curse the thief and use an entity that could bring him out of hiding or at least confirm his location. After some waiting with no results, I opted to use a tailor made rite that was in the grimoire but i still had memory of and I can say I believe had worked in multiple other occasions evident in my journal. The second ritual was a planetary ritual in which i first summoned the Olympic spirit of mars,Phaleg, then requested the audience of Andromalius since the goetic spirit is ascribed to mars, with the request of punishing the thief and returning my stolen belongings. The ritual used here was mainly derived or inspired by Practical Planetary Magick by David Rankine and Sorita d'este as well as Planetary Magick by Denning & Philips

Post automatically merged: Oct 23, 2025

And were both cases through evoking Andromalius?

Post automatically merged: Oct 23, 2025

I hope you don't mind me asking what your source for planetary rites are or any books that you would recommend

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Get Seven Spheres by Rufus Opus
its the simplest and most accessible way ive found to approach the spirits of the spheres.

other great source material includes agrippa‘s three books of occult philosophy, the picatrix, corpus hermeticum (Specifically the divine pymander) and a few others that are eluding me atm. If i remember i will come back and drop them here.