• Hi guest! As you can see, the new Wizard Forums has been revived, and we are glad to have you visiting our site! However, it would be really helpful, both to you and us, if you registered on our website! Registering allows you to see all posts, and make posts yourself, which would be great if you could share your knowledge and opinions with us! You could also make posts to ask questions!

How do you face it when a ritual fails?

deaddoves

Visitor
Joined
Jan 26, 2026
Messages
4
Reaction score
2
You shouldn't dismiss magic doesn't work because maybe it is working in the background but then you can't completely dismiss the fact that the results weren't what you wanted or didn't show up. So what do you do when you feel a ritual has failed? Do you pretend it has worked but then do another ritual?
 

Robert Ramsay

Apostle
Joined
Oct 1, 2023
Messages
1,255
Reaction score
2,911
Awards
9
Interesting question. One of the things I've seen before is that the failure was down to trying to accomplish too much change. In the words of Dirty Harry: "Man's gotta know his limitations"

You may find that you get success in the worst way possible - the 'Monkey's Paw' outcome.

And lastly, unless you had a strict time limit set on it, you may find that your success comes later than you thought, or even in the past!
 

beardedeldridge

Acolyte
Joined
Mar 4, 2023
Messages
441
Reaction score
2,163
Awards
9
Like Robert said this is a very interesting question and one that all practitioners have to face at some point.

Not knowing what you are trying to pull off and your experience level, my advice is to:

- Not to pretend like it worked but don’t dwell on the results either.

- If you have talent with divination, do a reading to see if you can find out why you haven’t seen the results you expected. Remember the other side is just as complex and complicated as this side. You aren’t the only will out there so there are tons of reasons why something hasn’t worked yet.

- (probably) don’t switch to another system. A lot of times newer practitioners think something failed and auto switch to a different tradition that they have even less experience with. And don’t achieve anything except for a string of one off failures thru every magical system known to mankind until they just give up. Don’t know if this applies to you but I’ll just throw it out there - food for thought.

- If the result is important to you then: using the same spell/ritual as before, let yourself get pissed that it hasn’t given you the results you wanted. Double down and with that righteous fury do it again just bigger and more elaborate than before. Force the results through. Don’t except any other outcome.

No time to proof-read my response at the moment but that should be a coherent enough response and how I personally would handle it.

Eld
 
Top