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The grims ARE the shortcuts.
Praise for Simon Dyda's The Wandering School of Secrets (Hadean, 2025)
It's a hard point to make these days, when 99% of everyone else says the opposite. 20th-century modern magic is very focused on a spiritual grind that is really not needed for the grimoires , and is mostly a waste of time for this specific form of magic. So it was a breath of fresh air to read Simon Dyda’s recent book from Hadean. I had read his Grimorium Verum framework and liked it tremendously.
The grimoires do not need 90% of all the tryhard grinding moderns say you have to do. I've been saying for years all you need is your imagination, a story, the names (both of which shape the iteration) and to get caught up in it while following the protocols. So it was nice to have someone say pretty much exactly the same thing, whom I have never met nor interacted with online
Like my other fave form of 'magic' - Neville Goddard's Law of Assumption - all you need is getting caught up in your imagination. With the grims the added elements are a name, story, and following the protocols, as mentioned above.
I will say I like trance becasue it is enjoyable, but yeah, it is also not necessary. Before everyone thinks this is weird, I should point out in in Hoodoo / Southern Conjure they do not go into trance to do the work either. And some structured imagination training is good. But like medicines quadrupling the dose does not make it more effective, and might be detrimental to your long term health.
The Wandering School of Secrets
by Simon Dyda (Headean, 2025)
Chap 2 Highlights
MAGIA VIAM APERIT
A common misconception in modern occultism is that magic
will only start working once the magician has overcome certain
hurdles, such as learning to banish thought through meditation;
correct breathing techniques; the building up or channelling of
esoteric energies; physical and mental exhaustion; the use of
narcotics; the study of psychology and/or neurology; the
fortification of one’s will power; or by developing one’s ‘psychic’
abilities. Other supposed requisites include entering a trance
state, or having an orgasm and then banishing any thoughts
concerning the desired goal.
None of these things are necessary in magic. These hurdles
have been imposed on magic by the mindset of late nineteenth
and early twentieth century hipsters, a mindset which despite its
spiritual and mystic pretensions was so anchored in rationalism
that it could not believe that magic would work without a
struggle. This mindset believed magic to be largely psychological
in nature, that struggle had to be one concerned with
consciousness and state of mind. The trendsetters of the
so-called Occult Revival, rather than seeking out actual
practitioners of Western magic, instead looked to Indian
mysticism for inspiration, blending it with Western mysticism to
create the fridge-raid soup of New Age flakery, neopagan
pantomime, and pseudomasonic pomposity that was
characteristic of twentieth century esotericism and occultism.
According to this mindset, for magic to be real it must be
especially difficult; requiring a trained singlemindedness and
focus and/or some means of bypassing the mind in order to
transcend the laws of physics and ‘nudge probability’ in a
desired direction. If at any point this becomes easy, it should
immediately be made more difficult in order to succeed.
All such statements as these are self-defeating nonsense: no
special powers of focus, concentration, and attention beyond
those required to perform any other task are necessary, and to
engage in any power struggle with one’s own mind is
counterproductive and serves only to undermine the efficacy of
the practitioner.
In traditional practices, magic is worked through an interaction
between the magician and spirits, not through a struggle
between the practitioner and their own mind. The magician
need not hack their way through mental undergrowth in order
to perform magic; instead, magic itself opens the way to magic
magia viam aperit. The only mental tool the magician requires
is the imagination.
The key word in this use of the imagination is immersion.
Anyone who has immersed themselves in a novel or a poem
has experienced this magical state of consciousness in which
perception is altered and extended by the imagination.
Immersion is facilitated by story. When performing magic, the
magician will be calling upon story of one sort or another, be
it in the form of verses from Holy Scripture, the deeds of
deities in mythology, or the use of their epithets. For this
reason it is important to familiarise ourselves with the myths,
legends, or scripture relevant to the spirits we are engaging
with.
Many books on magic contain theories of magic which often
amount to magician apologetics for either a medieval religious
or a modern rationalist audience and are of no practical use
beyond reassuring readers that the practice of magic is a sane
and acceptable pursuit.
We learn from experience that magic works, but we cannot
demonstrate why it works any more than a physicist can
demonstrate why the laws of physics work the way they do.
It is far more productive to accept magic on its own terms,
regardless of how ‘unscientific’ those terms might appear to be.
The magician is not required to believe in magic for it to work;
instead, the magician should disregard the question of belief
entirely.
Praise for Simon Dyda's The Wandering School of Secrets (Hadean, 2025)
It's a hard point to make these days, when 99% of everyone else says the opposite. 20th-century modern magic is very focused on a spiritual grind that is really not needed for the grimoires , and is mostly a waste of time for this specific form of magic. So it was a breath of fresh air to read Simon Dyda’s recent book from Hadean. I had read his Grimorium Verum framework and liked it tremendously.
The grimoires do not need 90% of all the tryhard grinding moderns say you have to do. I've been saying for years all you need is your imagination, a story, the names (both of which shape the iteration) and to get caught up in it while following the protocols. So it was nice to have someone say pretty much exactly the same thing, whom I have never met nor interacted with online
Like my other fave form of 'magic' - Neville Goddard's Law of Assumption - all you need is getting caught up in your imagination. With the grims the added elements are a name, story, and following the protocols, as mentioned above.
I will say I like trance becasue it is enjoyable, but yeah, it is also not necessary. Before everyone thinks this is weird, I should point out in in Hoodoo / Southern Conjure they do not go into trance to do the work either. And some structured imagination training is good. But like medicines quadrupling the dose does not make it more effective, and might be detrimental to your long term health.
The Wandering School of Secrets
by Simon Dyda (Headean, 2025)
Chap 2 Highlights
MAGIA VIAM APERIT
A common misconception in modern occultism is that magic
will only start working once the magician has overcome certain
hurdles, such as learning to banish thought through meditation;
correct breathing techniques; the building up or channelling of
esoteric energies; physical and mental exhaustion; the use of
narcotics; the study of psychology and/or neurology; the
fortification of one’s will power; or by developing one’s ‘psychic’
abilities. Other supposed requisites include entering a trance
state, or having an orgasm and then banishing any thoughts
concerning the desired goal.
None of these things are necessary in magic. These hurdles
have been imposed on magic by the mindset of late nineteenth
and early twentieth century hipsters, a mindset which despite its
spiritual and mystic pretensions was so anchored in rationalism
that it could not believe that magic would work without a
struggle. This mindset believed magic to be largely psychological
in nature, that struggle had to be one concerned with
consciousness and state of mind. The trendsetters of the
so-called Occult Revival, rather than seeking out actual
practitioners of Western magic, instead looked to Indian
mysticism for inspiration, blending it with Western mysticism to
create the fridge-raid soup of New Age flakery, neopagan
pantomime, and pseudomasonic pomposity that was
characteristic of twentieth century esotericism and occultism.
According to this mindset, for magic to be real it must be
especially difficult; requiring a trained singlemindedness and
focus and/or some means of bypassing the mind in order to
transcend the laws of physics and ‘nudge probability’ in a
desired direction. If at any point this becomes easy, it should
immediately be made more difficult in order to succeed.
All such statements as these are self-defeating nonsense: no
special powers of focus, concentration, and attention beyond
those required to perform any other task are necessary, and to
engage in any power struggle with one’s own mind is
counterproductive and serves only to undermine the efficacy of
the practitioner.
In traditional practices, magic is worked through an interaction
between the magician and spirits, not through a struggle
between the practitioner and their own mind. The magician
need not hack their way through mental undergrowth in order
to perform magic; instead, magic itself opens the way to magic
magia viam aperit. The only mental tool the magician requires
is the imagination.
The key word in this use of the imagination is immersion.
Anyone who has immersed themselves in a novel or a poem
has experienced this magical state of consciousness in which
perception is altered and extended by the imagination.
Immersion is facilitated by story. When performing magic, the
magician will be calling upon story of one sort or another, be
it in the form of verses from Holy Scripture, the deeds of
deities in mythology, or the use of their epithets. For this
reason it is important to familiarise ourselves with the myths,
legends, or scripture relevant to the spirits we are engaging
with.
Many books on magic contain theories of magic which often
amount to magician apologetics for either a medieval religious
or a modern rationalist audience and are of no practical use
beyond reassuring readers that the practice of magic is a sane
and acceptable pursuit.
We learn from experience that magic works, but we cannot
demonstrate why it works any more than a physicist can
demonstrate why the laws of physics work the way they do.
It is far more productive to accept magic on its own terms,
regardless of how ‘unscientific’ those terms might appear to be.
The magician is not required to believe in magic for it to work;
instead, the magician should disregard the question of belief
entirely.
)