Real Sorcery: Strategies for Powerful Magick

Part One

Basic Training

CHAPTER 1

The Gift

Every endeavor in life has a base, a path, and a fruit. Magick is no different, and so we must start by examining our base, the point at which we start. Most books on magick suggest the base or starting point is the same for everyone, that we are all, more or less, equally talented, and that everyone can accomplish every task with enough effort. Books promising that anyone can do it are as common in the magick section of the store as they are on the self-help and home-repairs shelves. Sadly, this isn't necessarily the case.

We are an egalitarian society and like to think that we are all created equal. Although I agree that all life has equal inherent value, that doesn't mean that we are all equally gifted at all things. Just as some people are born with innate talent in music, mathematics, or art, some people are born with innate talent for magick. If you are not particularly gifted in something, you can usually make up for it with hard work and practice, but sadly, just as there are tone deaf people who would like to make music or numerically challenged people who would love to be scientists, there are also people with almost no gift for magick. Some of you won't like to hear that, but it's true.

In older days, only people who had some gift or calling would have even considered studying magick. In most cultures, even ones in which magick is recognized and accepted as real, a career in magick or spirituality is not something that someone would undertake unless they felt strongly pulled in that direction. In Haiti, the Loa have been known to coerce gifted people into becoming Houngans and Mambos by making them ill until they enter training. It is the same in Nepal with Jankris (Shamans). Certainly, the strong taboo against Sorcery in the Western world, with penalties ranging from ridicule to execution, has in the past been enough to weed out those who had only cursory interest. Only those with a burning need would even consider undertaking any type of occult study.

Today, however, the situation is a bit different. Magick is big business and Witchcraft is popular. Rather than attracting only those who have a gift for the work, the arts attract hundreds of people who have no real calling for, or sometimes even an interest in, practical magick. They might be interested in Paganism as a religion, or magick as a countercultural statement. Some join a coven or order simply because other people in their social circle are doing it. These folks may try out a spell or two, but if they don't get immediate results, they stop trying because the magick isn't really what drew them in in the first place. There is nothing wrong with spiritual development or religion, but if people who aren't interested in or who don't even believe in practical magick keep calling themselves Witches and magicians, it causes a bit of confusion. As Robert Cochrane once pointed out, the world is filled with Witches who cannot perform the tasks of Witchcraft. This is yet another reason why I choose the term Sorcerer.

Now, before you get the idea that only a few lucky souls who are born with a caul¹ or are the seventh son of a seventh son can be successful Sorcerers, let me ease your mind by telling you that effort in developing your gift is far more important than your innate gift. Many people have powerful gifts, but put no effort into developing them, and thus produce shaky results, if any at all. Conversely, many people who have only modest gifts but put a lot of time into developing them turn out to be successful Sorcerers.

Besides innate gift and training, there is another element of the equation for successful Sorcery: implementation. You can have amazing gifts at magick, spending hours every day in meditation, study, and ritual, but still not know how to apply your talents in practical situations.

Imagine a man who wants to move a boulder. He is born with a large frame and good genes so he has the gift of strength. He trains in the gym and develops his muscles to the point where he is as strong as he can be. But when it comes time to move the boulder, if he doesn't know how to apply his strength, he still won't be able to move it. He needs to know about how to use a lever and where to place that lever for maximum effect. His natural strength is his gift. His weight training is his development. The lever and the knowledge of how to use it are implementation. Remember the following:

(Gift × Development) + Skillful Implementation = Success

So how do we know if we have a gift? There are some traditional signs we can look at that appear at birth. We already mentioned being born with a caul or being the seventh son of a seventh son as a couple examples. Being born on Halloween, having a stillborn twin, or simply not crying as a baby are other signs that people have pointed to through the centuries as marks of spiritual gifts.

There are also signs that can appear after important psychic events such as initiation or visitation by spirits. Witch hunters in the 16th and 17th centuries were obsessed with the idea that the Devil leaves a mark on his Witches after initiating them in midnight sabbats. The grisly practice of pricking Witches with needles, looking for Devil's marks or Witch's teats that felt no pain, was a major part of the inquisition's methods. There may have been a grain of truth to the legend, however. There are several lineages of traditional Witchcraft that acknowledge Cain as the progenitor of Witchblood and say that they possess a spiritual mark of Cain that can be seen by those who also possess the blood. There are Basque and Italian lineages of Witchcraft that take pride in Lucifer bestowing a similar mark.

Beliefs that gifts of magickal power come from bloodlines that have been mixed with angelic, fey, or demonic blood are actually fairly common. The Grigori or Watchers spoken of in Genesis 6 and in the Book of Enoch are said to have mated with human women and given birth to a race of giants and men renowned for their great powers. There are many English and Irish legends about changelings, people who possess fey-touched or pixilated blood, because they descend from humans that have been kidnapped and raped by fairies.

One of the magickal groups that I belong to is the Sangreal Sodality. As everyone that has read or seen The Da Vinci Code now knows, Sangreal means Royal Blood. In our case, however, we are not talking about the bloodline of Christ as a historical person, but an angelic or divine strain in the bloodline. In fact the words blest and blessed come from old English bloedsian, meaning to be consecrated by blood. Although this strain may have at some point been within only royal families, it is widespread now.² We believe that through training in magick, you can awaken this divine spark and bless yourself and others.

This idea of the gift of magick being passed by blood is part of the motive behind ancestor worship in most African Traditional Religions, and also the cause for celebrating saints and other spiritual masters from the past. By celebrating and invoking the lives of those who came before us in blood or in tradition, we make part of their experiences our own.

In the East, it is your former incarnations that are typically thought of as the basis for whatever gifts you have. If you were a spiritual person or some type of magician in a previous life, this is likely to manifest itself in this life as well. If you are able to control your mind through meditation and navigate the tricky waters of the bardo, the state between death and rebirth, you can have a great deal of control over your next incarnation. Important Tibetan lamas typically leave prophecies detailing where their next incarnation can be found. How and where these lamas incarnate is very important to their culture and politics. It was only a few years ago that the Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism was troubled by two competing incarnations of the Karmapa, the head of one of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Lots of arguments and even alleged assassination attempts were involved in sorting it out.

Unless you spend a great deal of time in retreat mastering higher meditation practices such as the Six Yogas of Naropa, forget about having that kind of control over your rebirth. You can, however, use the various methods of past-life regression to investigate former lives that have impacted your current incarnation.

Of course, the ultimate test to find if you are gifted in magick and what those gifts are is simply to try it out and see how successful you are. This book gives you a set of tools with which to train yourself, but there are other programs and paths. The key is finding the right one. Whatever you do, it is vital that your training not run counter to your gifts. As an example, I once met a man who had an amazing gift for healing by touch that manifested naturally. His patients reported not only wonderful success in almost everything he tried to heal, but strange visions of swirling colors as he did it. Looking to develop his gift, he sought out Reiki attunements and training. Everything he was taught in Reiki seemed to run counter to the way he did things naturally, but he had faith in the system and stuck with it until he retrained himself to heal the Reiki way. Unfortunately, this turned him from an amazing natural healer into a just mediocre Reiki practitioner. He could hang a sign out and claim to be fully trained, but his natural gift was lost, and his success rate dropped dramatically until eventually he gave it all up. If he had found a different system of training, or relied upon his own intuition or guides, he might still be healing people today.

The previous cautionary tale is not meant to scare you away from difficult work. Real training will be tough and will at times challenge your talents and preconceived ideas. Too many people these days look for a system that reflects their current habits and proclivities rather than a system that presents difficult challenges to grow by. If, however, your training seems to be completely counterintuitive, then you should look for something else. There are many different ways of doing just about anything. A good friend of mine, who is a natural Witch, recently almost threw in the towel because the ceremonial magick that she was training in seemed to dampen, rather than enhance, her gifts. She also didn't feel any kinship with the Pagan paths of Wicca that she had encountered. Once she switched to a more open type of training, such as what I present here in this book, she seemed to thrive.

Despite the manner of your approach you may find that there are certain tasks of magick that you find extremely easy, some you will have to train hard at to develop reasonable talents, and others you may find elude you completely. I am a bit of a wiz with protective and combative Sorcery, but can't work gambling magick to save my life. Even work done by other people on my behalf seems to fizzle when it comes to gambling. A friend in New Orleans made me a gambling gris-gris bag to take to the casino and it was a complete dud until I finally handed it over to my wife. The moment it hit her hands, she pulled down a couple hundred dollars on a slot machine and kept winning all night. That's just the way it is with some things. I could perhaps spend a lot of time and energy overcoming the problem and maybe gain some success, but sometimes it's better to just go with the flow.

As you progress through the work in this book, you should take some time to investigate your gifts. Talk to relatives and find out if there are any psychics or Sorcerers in your family tree. Light a candle to the ancestors and ask them to help you awaken. Do some past life sessions with a hypnotist or just meditate on it and see if you gain any insight into yourself that way.

Most importantly, do not be ruled by what you find! This is your current life, not your great-great-grandmother's, and not whoever you used to be in 1682. They are just influences on the present. It's much more important to experiment and test what you learn. See what you are good at, what you need to work at, and where your real stumbling blocks are. Your gifts are the base of the path, but should not be allowed to define the whole