Sometimes, I have moments where my brain gets stalled out by an idea. It can be the strangest things or the most basic. Yesterday, I was sitting down to plan out my First Quarter moon, and I knew I wanted to do some kind of magic to help with my goals, and I had one of those moments.
I didn't want to do the 'same old, same old' basic things that it feels like I am always dong: candle magic, sigil magic, talisman bag, visualization. I think it can be easy to fall into a rut and to have our default types of actions that we rely upon. But I also think this can lead to stagnation, and to disinterest. I personally find that the more times I have done something, the exact same way, the more likely I am to just go through the motions, and not actually devote the proper attention to it. Which, in the case of magic, means I'm not actually doing it.
It was fairly early in the day, and I wasn't quite awake yet, as I was sitting to plan. So when I decided I wanted to DO something, but not the things I typically do, I froze. I sat there, staring off into space for some time, and it was like I couldn't think of what I could possibly do.
Which made me really stop and think. It's not like I don't know all kinds of things that I could do, spells or rituals that could be used to aid my pursuits. But in that moment, my mind was questioning what magic really was.
This is a question I don't think is explored enough. I've mentioned before, that when I was first learning (about two decades ago now...) this was a topic that was explored more. Books that I read talked about why actions were done, and not just explaining why certain things related to other things and were therefor used in a particular spell, but really the basics of why we did spells at all.
And it all comes back to acting with intent. This concept has been put into different words by many different people. It has been explained as Will (with a capital W), when we are acting in accordance to our true Will (and not just our whim of the moment). It has also been called inspired action, where we are listening to the inspiration of the divine and acting with that guidance.
But I think it's less about why you do things and more about how. Both of these other explanations imply that if you aren't acting for some higher good (or guided by a higher power), then your actions are some how less worthy. And while I definitely feel that we need to listen to what our deeper self is telling us, in a purely functional sense, magic doesn't care what your intention is, just that you have one.
And this is where action with intent comes in. When we do magic, we are doing some kind of action, with the conscious intention that it will work towards whatever our goal is. What makes magic such an amazing art form is that it doesn't matter what action you use, or what intent you have, you can create magic that will work for you.
I think there is a tendency to want all the bells and whistles. We are drawn to drama and to production. We tend to put a higher value on things that look fancy. But in our day to day lives, it's just not practical to always need that kind of high ritual to get things done. There are tons of things we can do, with intent, to further our goals.
And this kind of low magic, the everyday simple stuff, becomes the backbone of our practice. Because it is the stuff that we do all the time, the things that start to become second nature to us, so that soon more of our life is magic than isn't.
As I was thinking this through (over a day, because I tend to ruminate over thoughts as I am doing other things), I realized that I was definitely over-complicating things for myself. My intention, for this moon cycle, was to explore the things I really crave and hunger for in my life, and to work on making sure those hungers are being met.
After spending several days thinking about (and journaling on) different areas in my life where I feel these cravings, I decided the main place I want to focus on is my writing, specifically in editing and self-publishing the moon cycle work I started several years ago. I had made a basic plan, deciding to do a set amount of both editing and formatting work each week, towards getting this book into a publishable format (which I am now realizing I may have over-extended, so the amounts I intend to do each week might get adjusted), but during this first-quarter phase, I wanted to take those basic plans and flesh them out.
One thing that I find works very well for me is not only laying out a full plan (with lots of concrete steps), but also tracking how I am progressing along this plan. I thought about how to magic this intention up, possibly creating a piggy-bank style fetish that I would then feed pieces of paper (on which I had written the tasks I needed to do) after I had completed each one, along with other items that energetically supported my intention.
But, as I have been working with habit trackers, I thought a simpler way would be to create a tracker that I would then charge with my intent. The great thing about trackers is that every time you check in with them, or mark something off, you are reinforcing your intention, and you have an opportunity to recharge your tracker to support fulfilling your goal.
I had intended to create the tracker yesterday, but got busy and forgot about it until late at night. I did make a tracker, but not one that I was very proud of. It was literally just small boxes to represent each of the months of the year (as the writing I have done already for it is organized by moon cycles for each month), and a second track for each of the moon phases (one thing I really need to double check is that I don't have a lot of repetitive information in the specific moon phase, so I want to look at all my crescent moon sections, and make sure they are individualized enough).
While what I created would work, it really wasn't something I would consider to be done with proper intent. It was absolutely a hold-over, an action I took just to keep moving. This isn't something that I like to do often, but I fully believe that any action is better than no action, so when I find myself having put off or forgotten something, I try to make sure I do something, anything, to keep moving forward, even if it's just a very basic thing that will later be redone.
So, now I am going to remake my tracker, but I have also decided that I don't need it to be fancy, like some of the very pretty and artistic trackers that I see in Bullet Journal Pinterest posts, but a very nice and well thought out list will work better for me. It's sort of funny, because when I write, I very rarely use outlines, but I find them super useful for planning.
I'll need to add things to my list that will turn it into an outline, a plan of action that will get me from where I'm at to where I need to be. In addition to the editing that I need to do (which I can lay out as a checklist, each month and phase can be checked off when I have gone through and edited it to my satisfaction), but also, I need to add in a few other tasks, like creating an introduction to the book as well as a gratitude page. And, I can further break down my formatting research into specific things I need to learn how to do in order to publish an ebook (like formatting a table of contents, and how to translate my file into the type that can be published on the Kindle).
I almost scrapped this idea as my magic work for this phase, because it felt too mundane, to analytical. Our minds work best with symbols and play, and this is neither of those. But it can be an excellent base for those, and by working with this outline in a magical sense, it becomes a launching point and focal pivot for other work.
If you think about many basic spell types, there is often a written component. This might be key words (like names or dates), affirmations, rhyming phrases (traditional spell chants and the like), or even longer pieces of journal work. These written components are often charged in some way, through repetitive action, through blessing or consecrating them with other ingredients or through transforming them (by burning or burying them).
I can do these things with my plan! I can add key words to the page it is written on, specific words that will trigger emotions in me to help me achieve the success I desire. I can bless my plan with sacred water, run it through the smoke of incense or bless it with fire (though I don't want to actually burn it up or bury it....until it has come to pass!), and I can chant over it with appropriate words. All of these actions will be charged with my intent, and will in turn charge my plan with that energy so that when I work with it, I am tapping into that energy.
If we take this idea, that magic is simply acting with intent, we can apply it to any action we wish to take. Sometimes we will want to take special actions to create our magic, rituals or spells that are entirely devoted to making magic. But other times, we can imbue our ordinary actions with magic by infusing them with intent. Everything we do can be imbued with intent, from cooking to cleaning, dressing to washing, working or playing.
And when we start to look for ways to act with intent in different areas of our life, we realize how much magic there is around us, always. We start to notice more ways we can mindfully take action to create the life we want to live, both in our microcosm (or personal life) and the macrocosm (the world we live in). We create the energy we want to surround ourselves with, and that energy ripples out and changes the people around us. Like a stone, creating waves in a pond, which alters the ground at the edge, we can effect so much more than we think we do, by simply changing our focus and acting with intent.
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