The Strategies of Desire in Magic
Over the last few years of not only consulting for but directly educating occultists, I’ve come to a host of realizations. Common struggles, very similar roadblocks and shared vexations seem to crop up time and again within aspiring students who really want to make their magic stronger but find themselves unable to get the results they’d like to.
One such issue in particular is the lack of ability to elegantly and effectively desire something. I’m fond of repeating to the point of being irritating that everything you desire exists, is very very real and, most crucially, someone out there is going to have it. So why, I ask time and again, should it not be yours? From there we begin, the student and I, to craft campaign plans to enchant their lives so that they can have this vast treasure they so deeply desire.
Except when they meet me with a sheepish or even blank glance and admit that they’re not very sure what it is that they do want. Sometimes they’ll confess that they feel guilty asking for things, magically or otherwise, and they don’t even know where to begin approaching that.
To that I’d like to submit the following claim: our world doesn’t teach us how to want very well.
I’m hardly the first person, or even the first public-figure occultist, to point this out. The difference between the children of wealthy and successful people and the children of most everyone else that I see relating to this is that the former group is often told that their desires are fundamentally good and they deserve to have them. Most people don’t even get that to grow up with and have to learn it later.
It’s easy to see how this could impact one’s approach to operative spellwork. My solution to training the student into better desiring is to practice, at first, admitting in some private form the things they actually want. A certain job? A specific lover? A nice material possession of literally any kind? Write them down. Write them down in detail. Cut through the knee-jerk discomfort of giving it shape and voice and train each day in yearning.
After such a list can be compiled easily (and it won’t be easy at first. It might even take a surprisingly long time to conjure up ten or twenty items for it) that’s when the student moves on to the next and crucial phase…
They Do Magic About It!
They cast spells for the items on the list. They get accustomed to not just wanting but deciding that, yes, the things they want *should* be theirs enough that they’re willing to sit down, conjure some spirits and demand it.
How good are you at wanting? Maybe give it a try and see where it takes your sorcery.
Author: Alexander Moore
My name is Alexander Moore and I am a practicing esotericist with over two decades of active experience in several occult systems including Solomonic Magic, Conjure and other folk practices and Traditional Witchcraft. I am proud to provide coaching, mentorship and divination for occultists who are interested in taking their magic and their lives to the next level in a changing world.