When to Use Magic: Should I Use Magic or Fight on the World Plane?

When a nasty situation crops up in your life, do you fight it or do you use magic? That's a question that many magicians face on a regular basis. On the world plane, taking action to resolve an "unfair" or "bad" situation seems like the right thing to do, but does getting entangled in a negative situation drag the rest of your life downhill?

On the other hand, if you use magic to attempt to resolve a situation without taking physical action, what kind of result will you get? Will the magic be strong enough to stop or change a negative situation that has already manifested physically? What's a magician to do?

When to Use Magic
Well, as a Native American elder once told me when I asked him the same question, "Do all the magic that you can ... and buy insurance." I got a laugh out of that, and I hope you do, too! And the message is clear:

1. Do all the magic that is appropriate to the situation
2. Take any and all physical steps to remedy the situation that do not cause you to feel negative or interfere with your magical work

That's pretty simple, right?

A Few Examples to Illustrate the Use of Magic
Of course, most magical principles sound pretty simple until you actually have to apply them to everyday situations. Reality is never as tidy as we would like it to be. So here are a few parallel examples that might illustrate what I mean.

We live in a farming community in Colorado, and out here in the high desert water is of immense importance: no water, no crops, no farming. People have been killed in Colorado over water issues and water rights. It's a big deal. Here are three examples centered around water rights and the use (or non-use) of magic to illustrate my point.

John's Case
John doesn't practice magic at all because he doesn't know anything about it. He got into a tussle with other members of his homeowner's association over how water was being distributed. Not having any magical means at his disposal, he (along with half of the homeowners) went to court against the other half of the homeowners. Ten thousand dollars and a year later, when the judge finally passed its decision, John wasn't satisfied with the result, and neither were ANY of the other homeowners on either side. Plus, he had a seriously bad taste in his mouth about the whole situation.

Harriet's Case
Harriet is a magical practitioner. Faced with a neighbor on the same ditch who kept taking her water, Harriet first response was to tell off the neighbor. She confronted him three times, to no avail. In fact, on the third go-round, the neighbor pointed out that Harriet's fence line was actually on his property, and that he could force her to move her fence if she kept harassing him about the water. That left Harriet, who has no love of pounding fence posts into the ground, in a bit of a quandary.

But she did have options--magical options. So she did some basic spell work to bring water to her pasture, which was drying up fast. She also did some weather work. The results were fairly neat, if not totally karmic. It rained and it rained. Harriet simply puts her horses on her pasture and doesn't cut hay from it, so the rain was perfect. Her field got watered and the grass grew. The neighbor, on the other hand, had just cut hay so his hay got rained on, which is never a good thing. It was all fairly karmic. The rain also delayed the neighbor's hay-cutting schedule, so there was plenty of water in the ditch for Harriet to use during the ensuing weeks. Pretty neat magical trick.

Our Case
Then there's our case. This year we have three new people on our ditch who are water hogs. We've tried talking to them, but they told us to take a long walk off a short cliff. Having figured out from past experience that no amount of "talking" would create much effect (and any talking immediately made us negative), we turned immediately to magic. In a very nifty turn of events, unexpected money and people showed up. The money came in the form of a check in the mail, literally. The people came in the form of electricians who could and would wire a pump on the back of our property so we could water our fields without bothering the people up the ditch from us. Perfection!

I hope these examples make clear the two principles I outlined above about when to use magic. In our case, we are taking physical action in the form of having a new pump installed ... but only after we had done our magic. In addition, these actions make us feel very positive rather than negative, which means that we won't get in our own way karmically or magically about the water situation. Make sense? Good, then go make some magic!

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Magical Ways to Stop Compulsive Thoughts

If you find yourself getting stuck in compulsive thoughts, you are probably an Air Element personality. This means that the element of Air is the most dominant in your personality and plays a key role in determining how you deal with life issues. It is very common for an Air type of personality to have compulsive thoughts, go round and round in their heads, and get distracted by the new and the novel. They also tend to have birth visions that are mentally-oriented – know, guide or see. On the plus side it also makes you a good communicator, planner, speaker and thinker who is able to think fast on your feet and come up with ideas, solutions and inspirations quickly. If this sounds like you, start being aware of how many times you start a sentence with "I see." That is often one of the personality characteristics of an Air dominant personality.

Even though Air personalities have all these great characteristics that can be very useful in everyday life, they often struggle with having the compulsive thoughts, being distracted by all their ideas, completing tasks and projects and changing their opinions and beliefs quite frequently. Here are a couple of magical solutions for dealing with this type of personality characteristics.

• White Chestnut Flower Essence - This flower essence can help release worry and clear your mind of unwanted thoughts. It can help you develop trust, clear thinking and problem solving. Take whenever repetitive thoughts or worry keep bugging you
   
• Come Back to the Present - Worry and fear are about the past or the future, never in present time. To free yourself of those type thoughts, come back to present time by feeling sensation in your body. You can only have sensation in present time. One good way to do this is to wear a rubberband around your wrist and snap it. The feeling of the rubberband hitting your wrist will bring you back to present time, so just snap the rubberband anytime you are bothered by those kinds of thoughts.

There are lots of advantages to being an Air type of personality. Learning how to cope with the struggles you face can give you even more of an advantage. For an indepth study of the Air Element, check out our Magical Element Air homestudy course. This is a good place for any aspiring student of magic to begin, but for those of you who are Air personalities it is even more important to fully understand this element that dominates your life in so many ways.

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Image courtesy of KROMKRATHOG / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Mixing Up Magic with a Pinch of This and a Dab of That? Not Hardly!

I know magical practitioners who approach the craft with the attitude of, "All it takes is a pinch of this and a dab of that." And certainly if you watch movies like "Harry Potter" or TV shows like "Charmed" you might get the idea that magic works like your grandmother's cooking: no recipe needed, just follow your instincts. Not hardly!

Magic is a Precision Science
From experience I have discovered that magic is a precision science. Using the right words, ingredients, symbols, and tools is very important. For instance, we often teach our students to use invocations to address magical powers and beings. In one, we address "Sky Father" and "Earth Mother." I am always amazed at how many students casually switch the order of these words when doing the invocation, and end up addressing "Father Sky" and "Mother Earth," thinking that they are addressing the same beings as "Sky Father" and "Earth Mother."

Not so at all. Magic is a precision science, and "Sky Father" is an entirely different being than "Father Sky." If you think that the distinction is unimportant, consider your own name. Suppose your name is Adam Johnson. Would it make a difference to you whether I called you Adam or Johnson? Sure it would. In many cultures, addressing a person by their last name can be either a sign of respect or a sign of denigration. It can make a huge difference.

Do Magic as a Precision Science
My teacher and mentor in magic, Reverend George Dew, had a favorite saying about magic: "Take your time, think it through, do it right." That's a great motto to use anytime you want to practice magic. After all, in the case of invoking powers and beings to help you, you want to get the right being. Getting the wrong being can send you down a rabbit hole or through the looking glass!

People often wonder why our magic courses, like Basic Magic, take so long to complete. It's because magic is a precision science, and a person doing magic rituals or practices without understanding the reasons behind them is risking harm. If you want to learn more about practicing the art of magic as a precision science, here are some guidelines to help you.

1. Learn Rules of the Road, the universal laws that we have found true in governing magical practice.

2. If you don't know the reason behind a magical practice or ritual, do some research until you understand, or don't do the ritual at all.

3. Take your time and learn one magical item at a time. When you get in a hurry and want to win the lottery with a spell immediately, you might as well toss your wand in the trash. Fast magic loaded with anxiety won't produce results, ever!

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Make A Magic Ritual Part of Your Morning

Magic is part of life, not something you do separate from your everyday life. If you want to have magic in your life, you have to practice magic all the time. Doing a magic ritual first thing in the morning can get your day off to a good start and become part of your morning routine. I know you are probably busy in the morning and think you don't have time, but even the busiest of people can work in the 3 magic rituals listed here.

My Three Magic Rituals Before Breakfast
I do at least three separate magic rituals every single day before breakfast, and it's no sweat, really. Want to know what they are? Simple.

Magic Ritual 1: Sit
Sitting, or meditating, is one of the best ways to invite magic into your life. I sit every single morning and surround myself with quiet. Burning a sun yellow candle in my sitting area helps clear out junky energies and make it a more peaceful space. I tend to sit in lotus position, because it's a stable position and I like it, but you don't have to. Just sit (or lie down if sitting is too uncomfortable). It doesn't matter whether you sit for 5 minutes for 50 ... just as long as you are quiet for long enough that the magic can slip into your life, between your thoughts as it were. The magic happens in the space between thoughts.

Magic Ritual 2:. Greet the Day
I go out and greet the day using the Navajo Beauty Way Day Greetings every single morning before breakfast. It's my way of making contact with powers and beings, acknowledging their presence, making any special requests for help, and generally getting in touch with my magical allies.

Magic Ritual 3:. Do a Reading
I'm usually reading some esoteric text or other, and I'll spend a few minutes in the morning immersing myself in some good spiritual material. I like readings from Gurdjieff, Abraham-Hicks, Carlos Castaneda, Edgar Cayce, and some more esoteric authors as well. A lot of people like to pull a card from the Medicine Cards or Sacred Path Cards, or flip open an angel book to get an "angel thought" for the day. Whatever floats your boat, pull some spiritual material from somewhere to get your day started on a magical footing.

All three of these little rituals take about 30 minutes total. That's not a whole lot of time to dedicate to living a truly magical life, and that's about all the Universe requires to bring the magic into your life. Pretty simple, huh?

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Why Magic Doesn't Have to Look Like Magic

We almost always offer magical rituals that allow you to practice rituals in public without feeling out of place. Example is the consistency exercise – you can choose anything, like checking your shoelaces and retying them at the same time every day, which prevents you from looking odd. Our Everyday Magic Email Course is full of magic that doesn't have to look like magic. This course gives you one lesson each week for 52 weeks with lots of magical knowledge and basics of how magic works. There are also exercises included that you can try out for yourself. One of the techniques you'll find in this course that lets you use magic right out in the open where no one will suspect is using colors. If you have an understanding of how colors relate to the four elements of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth then you can wear them, decorate with them and surround yourself with the appropriate colors for the purpose.

Elemental Colors
AIR COLORS
White - mental, thinking, planning, good for stimulating intellectual conversation, stimulating thinking.

Clear - physical air, seeing or breathing, hearing, also good for just "clearing the decks" in a situation.

Sky Blue - spiritual air, spiritual understanding, good for stimulating spiritual understanding or awareness.

FIRE COLORS
Sun Yellow (pure yellow, make sure there is no orange) - spirit vitality, lifts one's spirits, increases a spirit's ability to choose life path and direction, enthusiasm.

True Red - pure body metabolism, pure body heat (wear true red to increase your metabolism but be careful that it doesn't introduce too much heat into certain areas of the body, especially in the trunk area). People with a lot of true red "eat like horses" or have redness in cheeks.

Yellow-Orange - Neural activity, for fast reaction time, increased synapse speed (wear this or red-orange to a party to attract attention!), good for improving athletic performance in terms of reaction time, good for waking up when feeling sleepy or apathetic.

Red-Orange - Pain, anger, fever, hyperactivity, can stimulate physical activity when feeling sluggish. If children are already very active, dress them in powder blue or any of the air bands rather than fire bands.

Deep Red or Red Purple - Liquid heat in the body, good for raising the temperature of body fluids such as blood in the case of frostbite.

WATER COLORS
Water Blue - emotions, feelings

EARTH COLORS
Grass Green - living, dynamic earth, healing earth, good for causing things to grow, expand or heal.

Earth Brown - stabilizing earth, receptive earth, good for healing bones or stabilizing situations, good for grounding and solidity.

As you can see by knowing how colors translate you can magically accomplish a goal just by wearing a certain color. For example, if you are dragging, wear some sun yellow to perk up your energy level. Or if you are going through a period of healing, wear grass green. This is one of those times when magic doesn't have to look like magic, but the results will truly be magical.

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