Results magic

 Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

In this post I want to talk a little on an aspect of the work that I don't really give much attention to. Eagle eyed readers will have noticed that in my title I have (mis)-spelled 'magic'. leaving out the k in Magick. There is a simple reason for this, to me, results magick is not the same thing as Magick. Some will doubtless disagree with this, or misunderstand what I mean, which is perfectly ok. But this is my opinion based on my experience over the last nearly 30 years of messing around with both magic and Magick, and I seek only to express rather than persuade.

My very first experiments at spells were probably at the age of about 10 or 11, when I recall finding a small booklet of spells for an old AMIGA game (not old back then in the early 1990's) of the sword and sorcery type. It had various spoken spells to make it rain, light fires, and other things that I forget. I remember shouting these simple bi-syllabic words at the heavens with my brother, and appearing to have some success in which we both marveled at the apparent power were had tapped, although looking back it was just as likely coincidence and I don't regard this as a result as such. This probably piqued my interest in the occult. Later, on discovering Wicca at about 13, whilst charms and spells are all part of that system, I cannot say I had any real success with them. I remember being a love lorn teenager petitioning the Goddess to make the girl I was in love with reciprocate, which she did after a fashion but not as I wanted, which in hindsight is just as well for both of us. In any case even at that point I had the sense that these things were really only window dressing and not really what the system was about. There was the Goddess and the horned God behind it all, quietly ruling over nature. Wicca has a distinctly religious aspect of the animistic type and somehow messing around with poppets to gain love or money seemed a bit vacuous compared to the great tides of nature. 

Crowley was at pains to separate his system of Magick from the parlour tricks kind of magic that we call results magic, or low magic. That's not to say that one should not ever do results magic, but that it should always be results "Magick". This is to say, that it should be in line with ones True Will. To paraphrase from memory, any other sort of magic (other than the Great Work) tends towards black magic, and to deliberately work towards anything other than the Great Work is black magick by definition. Of course, this means that the first and foremost task of the magician should be the that of discerning the True Will, which in the A.'.A.'. system stats with the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, although we need not confine ourselves to that label.

I spend a fair amount of time using the internet and haunt a few occult, spirituality and Thelema based groups and forums. I often see posters asking for a spell for this, a charm for that, or advice on how to summon some demon from the Goetia. I've even seen people asking how to invoke the Virgin Mary and Christ! These people want spirits, up to and including God himself to manipulate reality on their behalf in order to obtain some secular end that they have been unable to secure for themselves. If God doesn't perform as they ask, they ask Satan or his demons. Others will try to use spells to effect changes in society, make politicians see sense or influence the ruling of high-court judges, and while these desires may be laudable in themselves, only a Magister can really claim to understand the universe, only a Magus has the Wisdom, and for the rest of us the use of magic to effect such things is I think presumption at best. Only one time have I managed to raise a significant amount of energy using results magic, for a protective spell for a friend going to a dangerous part of the world. The result was a backfire, resulting in a near mental collapse on my part and a withdrawal from the occult lasting several years, and however well intentioned my efforts I clearly didn't understand what I was dealing with. Far better to keep things on their respective planes, if you want a better world, work towards it in the usual, pragmatic way, but first, work on yourself, to quote Gandhi: 

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”

The use of results magic to enact changes to the external world may be labelled as 'spiritual', but in my opinion there is nothing spiritual about it, it is entirely secular in its methods and objectives, and stems from the view of magical powers as a sort of supernatural Swiss Army knife to obtain ends more or less arbitrarily, with no consideration as to whether such things are proper to their nature or to the course of events. In fact, such people don't care about their real nature, their True Will, and are in reality only a collection of wants, justified with one or other label of spirituality.

As I have gone on in life, and with initiation, I have found more and more that I cannot perform even the simplest results magic, such is not in line with my Will. I understand the technical methods, and could probably put together a recipe for such a working well enough, but I lack to energy, the drive, the will to pull it off. On the other hand, not long ago I performed a working using four sigils for four spirits which I evoked directly as part of my current grade work. This was a directly willed task related to and supporting the ultimate end of the work of an Initiate, and instead of the halting, forced and artificial atmosphere of results magic, this was profound, intuitive, simple and effective, and entirely in line with the above quote, in that the subject of the required change was myself, to better express the universal will, not vice-versa. The results started almost immediately and those four forces, which had always been active in my life, now being named and recognised became much more obvious, and thus easier to control, which was the intent of the working. This has led to greater self-awareness and control in my daily life on the one hand, and unexpectedly, greater peace, trust and equanimity in my interior life. A deeper silence has opened up beyond the silencing of the internal dialogue, as a stream opens to a deeper lake, so the superficial silence of interior words has given way to a deeper interior quietude beyond a simple absence of words. 

The reason for this difference is clear enough I think. Results magic is based on exterior wants, the desires of the senses, it is focused on secular ends, on that which arises and passes away. Magick conducted as part of the Great Work, under the direction of ones Holy Guardian Angel, is interior, spiritual, of universal scope whilst also being entirely human and in harmony with our basic nature. The effects on ones outer life are not arbitrary, but are the result of a greater harmonising of the outer and the inner. Another way to put this would be to say that when what you really want is in harmony with the Tao, when ones personal life is in sync with the way of the universal, the True Will, or the Will of God, then magick becomes a natural expression of life rather than a device for fulfilling wishes, and the magician is then no longer a mere 'occultist', but a magician in the true sense, a being more powerful and yet simpler than the pseudo-spiritual type of occultist who wears his spirituality as a sort of posture. Nothing can stop you when you have the momentum of the universe behind you! 

Love is the law, love under will.