Power

 

Power is a strange thing. People often seek power while having no idea what power actually is. All they know is they are not satisfied with their life or some situation(s). The seek power over those problems but since they do not know spiritual power, they take a clue from mundane power.

Mundane power is the ability to control people and situations. For example, being in a position to hire and fire people, have access to money making opportunities that others do not or being in control of social perceptions or groups. While magickal power can be used in these ways, those are not examples of spiritual power. This is true even though spiritual forces, in the broadest sense of the term  (i.e. spirits themselves or life force energy), can be employed.

One can use a road opener spell to open a path to a new job, bind a stalker or open up communications. Those are examples of magickal power but not spiritual power as I define the terms. While you can open a path to a new job as a charity worker or mafia enforcer, intent does not factor into these definitions of power. Magickal power is the ability to impact the mundane world directly using non-mundane methods. To use it, one must make specific decisions. One must decide one wants a job or that a stalker must be stopped. There is nothing wrong with using magickal power in this way.

I have met practitioners of hoodoo that do not look at their practice as spiritual in anyway at all. I have met some say the traditional prayers that go with some hoodoo practices that do not really believe what they are saying. They simply acknowledge that a formula works. They do not claim any particular spiritual insight or self-improvement has resulted from working their tradition.

Spiritual power is different. There is nothing overtly to do once one possesses spiritual power. There is no one to control. There is no situation to manipulate. One simply lives within one’s own space.

Spiritual work is basically finding out what that space is, locating the center point and residing there. When I first began my magical track, my circle and home position within that circle look like this.

The circle encompassed all the events and interactions in my life. The red area indicates my then insecurities both valid and invalid. The black dot represents my home position at the time. Obviously, that is a very difficult place from which to navigate one’s life. Some people would choose to magically lash out at anyone who challenged this position. I did not do that. I did verbally argue my position and pushed people back. Yet, at the same time, I was constantly trying to fix myself. I believe refusing to do magick to control those past situations benefited me in the long term. In the short term, some people cleaned my clock!

As I began to have some healing abilities, I convinced myself I was operating from a new place. This new place was mercy and caregiving for those that “needed my help”. Not only is that a place of ego but again a recapitulation of insecurity in a different form. It was as if I was saying to myself, I must have improved because now I can help some people. There were times where I bought into that line of thinking. There were other times when I knew it was bull shit.

The image below shows a shift in my home position within my circle. I was still out of balance and operating from a place of ego, albeit a kinder one.

At this point, I was always taken aback when somebody I helped revealed themselves not to be my friend. I had conflated being kind and healing towards others with earning their friendship. That was an error on my part.

I could go through a lot of similar iterations moving both the point and perspective within that circle. Yet, the story would not change much. Life was always a struggle.

Only very rarely, when somebody was being particularly troublesome, did I use magic to push people outside of my circle. Some might call that controlling others. I called that creating a reasonable space within which I could work. I’m sure it is pretty easy to see both sides of that discussion.

My point is, that when working magic to exercise control (power), one pretty much stays in the same place. If that place is a position of insecurity, an emotional need to control and dominate others, an emotional need to help others or any other unbalanced place, working magic does the practitioner little good in the long term. In fact, it becomes a cement keeping one stuck in an out of balance or uncentered place.

The practice of spiritual magic or theurgy, is to keep moving out of imbalanced places until one finds the center point within one’s circle. At this point, the circle self-balances. So, people that seek to do you harm have a very difficult time doing so. Those little mistakes we make also are self-correcting before they become big mistakes. And the more we recognize things that need correcting or have self corrected for us the less mistakes we make.

Standing in that center point is such a strong place that one is nearly unassailable. Yes, it is possible for the random person to shoot you or rob you or for somebody else in your life to do nefarious things. If that happens while you are centered and balanced, at some level it becomes your own life lesson on a much larger scale than average. Or, it was simply your time to go. While dying might be agony, death really doesn’t matter.

When you are at that point of balance within your circle it looks like this.

If that looks like the symbol of the sun to you, in that you can find a clue to the first level of spiritual work. If that looks like an eye to you, that can be a hint for you about what it is like to be in this place.

When you are in a position like this, there is very little magic for you to do that has any impact on anybody else. Your sphere does that for you. Because those who enter that sphere very often automatically adjust themselves to a point where they either become participants, allow themselves to heal, or move elsewhere. The work at this point is simply expanding the boundaries of the circle.

Spiritual power is not exercising the need to control. Spiritual power is simply expansion.