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When nothing works for a neophyte

Veracity

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Greetings
I've been practicing magick from GOM books but to avail, not attacking the GOM , some people told me that the problem is not with me but rather with GOM books since they lack any mention to energy work , some said I'm not meant to practice magico etc.... If you were in my shoes what would you do ? Thanks in advance for your time .
Personally I think you should keep a record of what has worked for you in the past and start incorporating different functions of rituals into your own and see what changes and if things improve. I’d say just slowly incorporate instead of taking on a brand new protocol all at once
 

ward

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Personally I think you should keep a record of what has worked for you in the past and start incorporating different functions of rituals into your own and see what changes and if things improve. I’d say just slowly incorporate instead of taking on a brand new protocol all at once
Thanks for your time reading my post. The problem is didn't achieve any success whatsoever to mention to the extent that bI started questioning the reality of magick itself , but after some contemplation I know that the problem is deep inside me either blockages or lack of fundamental practices aka basics.
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Getting rid of negative influences helps a lot, old burdens discarded make more centered.
Yes I totally agree with you
 

dzb10035

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Sorry to hear that the GoM practices did not work for you. I found them quite useful, with a lot of results and many others did too (at least on Facebook groups). But like what many others have said, you might not resonate with the approach offered by GoM and this is totally fine. Sometimes it is the method that does not work for us and other times it is what we think about the method. For example, if you think the method sounds "too good to be true", than this can create resistance in the working and prevent you from actually getting the result. Such things can happen in magick.

I have also found results outside of GoM, such as with doing Solomonic evocations or using certain mantras. I think this is what is wonderful about the occult, you get to explore different things and find out the practices that work for you. When I started doing some of the internal alchemy work from Franz Bardon's work, I actually found that these worked far better for me for inner work than just using GoM magick by itself. I actually started sensing the inner changes that occurred within me in better time scales than anything I did using their works. So you need to experiment and try the different things that work for you.

One thing that we do need to make clear though is that while GoM (and similar Power of Magick works) do dilute the complexity of the magick, their magick is largely based on workings that have existed in older manuscripts and works. For example, a lot of the stuff they have in "Demons of Magick" is either based on the method of Dr. Rudd (think "Goetia of Dr. Rudd") and some practical Kabbalah. Another example is the "Angels of Alchemy", which has a lot of its method based on how to work with the 42 letter name of god and its offshoot angels. The 42 letter name of god and its angels are explored by experts like Jacobus Swart who proposes a similar, but more complex set of workings. Just because something is more complex does not mean that it is more effective. In all the cases that I mentioned, GoM works use material from previous works that are legitimately powerful rituals in their own right, but they ended up demoncratising it by making it simpler.

Others have mentioned that sometimes, the issue could also be a matter of fundamentals. Magical ritual requires powerful intention, focus, and direction to be effective. If your ability to focus and present your intention is weak, then your workings could fail regardless of the method you choose. If your ability to concentrate and direct the energies of the ritual are lacking, then similar issues could occur. There is nothing preventing you from working on meditating, energy work, or whatever in order to get more effective results. I use Initiation into Hermetics, spaygrics, and meditative practices to refine what I do when I work a GoM ritual. I find that it does help when you work on the fundamentals and channel your skills into the actual ritual. For example, in GoM it is very helpful to be able to feel the necessary emotions during the "emotional transmutation" process they usually use. If you meditate frequently and practice your visualization skills, then you might go further than feeling and actually visualize the emotions + the results you are looking for. The combination of emotion and visualization can lead to a stronger "intent" given to the ritual and could help make the ritual more effective. Small things like this can be overlooked inside of any ritual.

As a beginner / "neophyte", it might be easy to think that the magick is not working, but as you practice rituals more and iterate over your failures, you will understand more why certain things work. Others have said that you should record your results in order to have a log of results so that you can analyze what to do better next time; this is something that is extremely helpful in the long term. While certain people might advocate to understand one specific path or system at the start, I would advise that you explore far and wide in order to try and understand the nature of magick itself. Every magical tradition does magick and all of those magical practices end up having similarities to each other. If you understand their internal structure, their parallels, and their common fundamentals, you will come to understand the reality of what effective magick can look like. It also sounds like you are looking specifically into practical magick and so you might find it effective to read something like "The Elements of Spellcrafting" by Jason Miller. He gives a much better version of the concepts needed to do effective practical magick than the GoM does. I would suggest you read that and pair it with a practice that gels well with you which gives you a strong sense of the fundamentals.
 

SerpentBakery

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Unironically learning ancient philosophy (Platonism has helped me most in my magical practice) was the best for my personal magical practice.I usually divine the ritual instructions I need to do and it does work out just fine for me. I believe this is partially because I know the structural (eg: metaphysical/philosophical) principles upon which magic even works.

If you don't understand how or why something works, you won't be able to do much in my personal experience. An example: how do the elements relate to one another, and why? What outcome do you have when you place a certain ratio of those elements within a ritual? What are the limitations? And so on. Point is, you can read all the instruction manuals/grimoires in the world, but if you don't know the objective base of these practices then you won't be able to get anywhere. It's like trying to build a house without a ground or a foundation under it.

Intent also matters. Why do you wish to do these things? The more you seek power, the less likely you are to attain true power, for example. I personally did it because it felt like an instinctual calling to me, and only later did I find out I come from a long lineage of female folk practitioners. I have noticed having this kind of "better" intent helps me see things more clearly, and causes my magical practices to be more effective.
 

neilwilkes

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Personally I think you should keep a record of what has worked for you in the past and start incorporating different functions of rituals into your own and see what changes and if things improve. I’d say just slowly incorporate instead of taking on a brand new protocol all at once

That's one of the best pieces of advice you're going to get - start to keep a magickal diary, as this will eventually become your own 'workbook'.
It should include as much information as possible, right down to the weather, time of day, your mood at the beginning - as much information as you can think of - until you are at a stage where you know what is relevant, it's best to write literally anything & everything that occurs to you down.

Practise is also very important - and by practise I mean things like 20 minutes of meditation a day - if you can only do 5 then that's better than nothing though, but I would suggest to aim for 20 minutes at least twice a day, more if you start to get results.
Visualization practise is also important, likewise controlling your breath, Posture and more. There will be those who say 'nay, nay' to what I am about to suggest but I highly recommend Crowley's 'Liber E vel Exercitiorum' as I have always found it incredibly efficacious.
Learn how to perform the Pentagram & Hexagram rituals when you get more confidence too - the only issue being that there are oh, so many variations on these themes it can be overwhelming at first.
Start out by reading, reading, reading & avoiding any partisanship or preferential 'teachers' or 'systems', the idea being that when illumination comes it finds a well-built foundation - eventually a system will literally call to you and when it does you're on the first rung of a wonderfully exhilarating ladder.
Persevere
 

Reaper

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I started with the smaller stuff. Witchcraft was my gateway. You could try to start simple. Candle magic, spell jars, things of that sort. You must also believe that your magic "Will" work. Not maybe, or I hope , but will definitely work. Belief in yourself makes a huge difference.
 

Van Horne

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Greetings
I've been practicing magick from GOM books but to avail, not attacking the GOM , some people told me that the problem is not with me but rather with GOM books since they lack any mention to energy work , some said I'm not meant to practice magico etc.... If you were in my shoes what would you do ? Thanks in advance for your time .
May I ask what do you want to achieve exactly?
 
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