Big Magick is Dangerous Magick

Over the years I have heard people say that a test of a magician’s skill is making the improbable happen. My point of view is that making the improbable happen is usually pretty dangerous. In order to make an incredible event happen immediately a lot of probable things have to happen at once. Therein lies the danger.

In a non-magickal life if a woman wants a well paying job the first thing she needs is an education. Some positions do not require a formal education but they all require knowledge of the work and a certain skill set. So the job seeker must obtain some sort of formal training. Then she must apply for entry level jobs that use those skills. After she lands a job and works hard she will obtain experience and more skills. She plays the social game in the organization and people like her. Gradually she will make more and more money. Eventually the goal of obtaining a well paying job is reached.

You would think big magick would skip that process. What sort of event would need to happen to go from a mediocre job to a well-paying one instantly? The answer to that is that even big magick does not work that way.  Instead of one enormous leap a big ball of magick sits on the astral and creates series of smaller events. Each event would be easily possible and not all that exciting. The improbability is the consistent string of occurrences moving towards a single larger goal.

Using the case of our job seeker above the starting point is a position with little likelihood of finding a job with a good salary. The next step for some is using big magick. The result will be that the magick moves the soon to be well salaried person to a place where the unlikely becomes the likely. Magickally this is known as a current. 

Think of that just like you would a river current. If you are on a boat in a river and the current is pushing you south towards the Gulf of Mexico. Since that is where you want to go all you have to do is not capsize and not change your mind regarding your destination. If you are on the Yellowstone moving southwest into the desert you will have a problem reaching that same goal. Big magick picks up your boat and drops it in the Mississippi.  As you improbably sail through the sky towards the Mississippi you may fall out of the boat, freeze to death due to altitude or maybe you are impaled by the bill of an oncoming duck! Whatever the case it is a dangerous way to travel.

A non-magickal person gets out of the boat, finds a way to make a buck to finance travel back to the Mississippi, works some more to secure passage on a boat and reaches his goal.

I used this example because I did this big magick with this same goal. I was in a menial temporary job with no prospects and no college education and decided that I was going to magick myself into a permanent job. The problem was my wording. I didn’t just do magick for a job. I did magick that would “keep me financially comfortable for the rest of my life”. In short, I tried to go from nowhere to a well paying job. Big Magick. I did not know that was big magick at the time.

I did the magick on a Sunday night. Much to the shock of my roommate I received a call from an employer the next day. I had applied with him a year previously but was runner up to the owner’s son-in-law. I was asked to come in for an interview and was hired.  I was later told by all three people that worked there that it was their idea to call me.

I had worked there for about a year when I caught a falling forty pound falling box and injured my back so severely that I had trouble walking for two years. As most readers know I still suffer from chronic back pain. While I was laid up and beginning to heal Ross Perot started his petition drive for president. I was inspired to volunteer despite having never done such a thing before. The timing was perfect. I was just healed enough to be able to work a few hours a day while the Worker’s Compensation case was dragging on. My lawyer told me not to find work yet as that would interfere with my settlement. Very quickly and improbably I ended up running Fresno County’s petition drive.   While working for Perot a mentor latched onto me and began introducing me to people. When Perot took his dive out of the race my mentor took me to work for the Clinton campaign. There I met an up and coming politician that would become the Lieutenant Governor. When I interviewed with my current employer 22 years ago that politician’s best friend was chairing the panel.

I worked my way up in that division. Eventually we came across a problem that no one had the skills to fix. Our order tracking was abysmal. I took a few Access database classes that were offered by my employer at the time. I put together a functional database to resolved most of our problems.

In that job I was a jack of all trades. I could do every job in my division except the manager’s and could help out in the divisions around me. This meant that I filled in for everyone’s vacations but no one could fill in for mine. I was often denied vacation time due to projects that only I could do.

We then came across a problem with my Access database that I did not know how to fix. I obtained some one-on-one time with the instructor. As he taught me how to solve the problem I told him that I had to find a new job. I wanted to be able to take a vacation and be a bit more appreciated. He told me of my current position, how to get there and that I would be good at it.

At this point I am comfortable for life.  My salary is above the median income for my town and my retirement plan is unheard of. Further financial opportunities are now opening up in amazing and unlikely ways.

Please notice that each event was possible. It was possible that someone would not want to spend time interviewing for a new position and would remember me and call. It was possible that I would become injured at work. It was possible to volunteer somewhere. It was possible to be well-liked enough for someone to take me under his wing. It was possible to meet someone important in politics in that situation. It was possible for him to be on an interview panel. It was possible to work hard and create my opportunity there. Big magick isn’t making the impossible happen. It is about making the possible happen with regular progression towards a goal.

That back injury was the magick moving me from one current to another. In fact, that back injury was the most improbable thing to happen. At that time I was a gym rat. I was a big muscular guy and unlikely to injure myself. I could have wound up in the same place or better without the injury had I done any other prep work. As it was I was such a loner for most of my life and relatively unskilled so the only way to get there was to rip me into the new social reality of politics via an injury.

It is much less dangerous to do small magicks to make probable things happen. Had I the wisdom then I would have done magick in the following order:

1.  Obtain any job at all that was not dangerous just to keep me afloat

2.  Reveal an innate talent that I would enjoy developing and using

3.  Engage socially with people of that same disposition

4.  Reveal a path to employment using that talent

5.  Exploit that path into a job with a long term future and retirement plan

There is not a single improbable step in that plan. That course would help me to walk the path to the proper river and easily purchase passage on a boat. The only duck I would see would be flying overhead about to impale some crazy man in a flying row boat!

I did big magick and the improbable happened. Does that make me a good magician? Perhaps. It did reveal me to be an inexperienced and unwise magician at the time.

Figure out what you want and make a plan. Do magick to make the next step in that plan happen. Once that step is taken do magick for the next. Magick is not about impressing people with the improbable. That is just your ego. Magick is about reaching your goals. Most goals are best reached one step at a time.