Energy And Chaos

On the Advantages and Liabilities of Magical Thinking in Magical Practice

“The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.” – Joseph Campbell

There are certain temperaments that tend, more often than not, toward magical practice. They notice correspondences quickly. They feel atmosphere change when entering a room. They wake from dreams with entire landscapes intact and coherent. They detect rhythm in coincidence. They are rarely content with the flat explanation when a layered one is available. While these traits can deeply enrich one’s experience of the world, the same temperaments are also particularly vulnerable to misreading the world.

Heightened pattern recognition is not inherently mystical. It is simply the mind’s capacity to detect relationship. A practitioner who sees three crows in succession and pauses is not irrational; they are attentive. The question is whether that attentiveness is disciplined. Pattern recognition becomes magical thinking when it is unexamined. The mind that can weave meaning across distance can also weave illusion across absence. A string of unrelated events may be gathered into a narrative because the mind finds comfort in coherence. A dream may be treated as directive rather than digestion. A symbol may be taken as summons when it is merely familiarity. This is not a moral failing. It is an occupational hazard.

Strong imagination operates similarly. It is the faculty by which unseen forms become perceptible. Without imagination, spirits would rarely ever be encountered with any degree of intensity or clarity, because encounter requires a receptive medium. The imagination is that medium. Yet the imagination is also generative. It produces images without external stimulus. It elaborates. It embellishes. It intensifies. If a practitioner does not learn the temperament of their own imagination—how it behaves when bored, how it behaves when lonely, how it behaves when frightened—they risk mistaking its productions for visitation.

In my experience, what separates a gifted practitioner from a deluded one is not the presence or absence of imagination, but the presence of restraint. There is a tendency in modern discourse to equate skepticism with disenchantment and credulity with openness. But many traditions—especially ones that involve direct magical/spiritual investigation and mitigation—rarely operated this way. Many folk practitioners were and are profoundly pragmatic in their own right. A thing might be a spirit. It might also be damp air in the wall. One does not need to decide immediately. The disciplined practitioner permits ambiguity to remain. Magical thinking in its immature form insists upon meaning. In its matured form, it tolerates mystery without filling it. This distinction is subtle but decisive.

Consider coincidence. A practitioner with heightened pattern recognition may experience a series of related symbols in close succession. They might see a particular animal repeatedly, hear its name spoken unexpectedly, and dream of it that night. One response is to declare oneself chosen. Another is to note the pattern and wait. Patterns that persist without prompting tend to clarify themselves. Patterns that require constant reinforcement from the practitioner tend to dissolve when not fed. The imagination can amplify either pathway.

There are individuals whose minds are naturally porous. They perceive emotional undercurrents. They sense when something is about to occur. They anticipate shifts. This porosity can feel like psychic ability, and in some cases it may be precisely that. It can also be anxious vigilance, however. An anxious mind also scans for patterns, as a way to make sense of our circumstances and offer protective action. It also predicts outcomes. It also feels charged by small deviations in environment. And without careful self-study, the two can become indistinguishable.

To practice magic responsibly is to cultivate self-knowledge alongside perception. One must learn the texture of one’s own thoughts. Which ideas arrive quietly and remain steady? Which arrive in a rush and demand immediate action? Which are accompanied by fear? Which by stillness?

In my observation, genuine encounter tends toward steadiness. It does not need to shout. It does not flatter. It does not insist upon immediate identity change. The imagination, by contrast, often seeks drama. This is not to disparage drama. Many initiatory experiences are intense, and some encounters are world-shaking. But intensity in and of itself is not evidence.

There are practitioners who possess extraordinary imaginative capacity. They can construct elaborate inner landscapes and inhabit them fully. This can be a profound asset. Ritual often requires visualization. Relationship with non-ordinary beings often begins in imaginal space. However, the imaginal is not synonymous with the external or the true. A useful discipline is to differentiate between what one generates and what resists generation. If you attempt to alter an inner image and it alters easily, you are likely within your own construction. If it resists modification, behaves unpredictably, or introduces information you would not have chosen, the experience warrants further observation. Even then, caution remains appropriate.

Magical “giftedness,” if such a term is to be used at all, often consists in sensitivity. Sensitivity to pattern. Sensitivity to mood. Sensitivity to subtle change. These are not inherently supernatural traits. They are neurological and psychological tendencies that, when refined, allow one to perceive what others overlook. Yet, as William James observed, “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”

But they can also render one susceptible to overwhelm. A mind that detects pattern everywhere may struggle to dismiss irrelevant stimuli. A mind that imagines vividly may struggle to rest. A mind that senses atmosphere may struggle to differentiate between personal emotion and environmental influence.

Thus the same traits that allow one to see hidden facets of reality can distort reality. The difference lies not in suppressing these faculties but in training them. In this context, training includes:

— Deliberate grounding in ordinary cause and effect.

— Verification when possible.

— Patience before conclusion.

— Acceptance of uncertainty.

It also includes humility. There is a particular danger in magical communities of rewarding dramatic narrative. The practitioner who reports grand visions and complex spirit courts is often given more attention than the practitioner who reports subtle shifts and quiet guidance. This can unconsciously encourage elaboration. The gifted practitioner often learns to be content with the modest. It is often the modest perception that proves most reliable.

Magical thinking, in its healthiest form, is not belief in fantasy, but recognition that the world may contain more than is immediately visible. Heightened pattern recognition, in its healthiest form, is not paranoia, but attentiveness to interrelation. Strong imagination, in its healthiest form, is not escapism, but an instrument for encounter. Each becomes curse when untethered. If a practitioner refuses all skepticism, they risk constructing an elaborate architecture of falsehood around themselves. If they refuse all imagination, they risk sealing themselves off from subtle perception entirely.

The work, then, is balance. One must allow the mind to wander without allowing it to rule. One must attend to pattern without worshiping it. One must imagine without conflating imagination with fact.

The land remains the land whether or not one is perceiving spirits. Wood remains wood whether or not it is being carved into a charm. Bills must be paid. Food must be cooked. Bodies must be cared for. If one’s magical thinking begins to erode these foundations, it is not a gift in that moment. Yet if one’s heightened perception allows them to notice when a place is disturbed, when an offering is ill-suited, when a relationship is unbalanced, then it is indeed a gift.

The very same faculty can mislead or reveal. It depends upon whether it is examined. In this way, magical temperament resembles fire. In the hearth, it warms and cooks. Uncontained, it consumes the house. The practitioner’s task is not to extinguish the fire of imagination or the spark of pattern recognition, but to learn the architecture within which they can safely burn.

Only then do these traits cease to be a liability and become what they were always capable of being: instruments of a wisdom and discernment.

—

How much of it is actually useful, how much of it applies to your spirits or cosmology?

Who or what do you neglect regularly? What areas need more attention, more focus? What flames need to be tended?

Is there anything that no longer serves a purpose? Can anything be simplified to greater effect? How much time do you devote to strengthening your core skills and foundations?

Manannán mac Lir, Rowan Kal, 2026, digital painting

I think you have got a nice logic puzzle here, my bud. You have made serious strides into solving this problem for yourself:

You know your guy has to be in there. You just haven't found him yet.

Witchfathers are not exclusively gods of lore. It's like going through the top 15 Hollywood A-list actors and saying you can't cast someone in a roll. There are still five million actors in Hollywood alone.

Witchfathers may be ancestors, or faeries, or wights. Or something that is all three. Your Witchfather may be the Oak whose roots you woke up in the last time you left this earth, before you were reborn. He may be a spirit of the land, who is only recorded in the journals of mystics who have lived where you lived, and five Livejournal posts published in 2005 edited for anonymity.

There is not now, and I do not believe there will ever be, a comprehensive list of all entities that can be a "Witchfather" in Traditional Witchcraft.

So I must ask you:

What would happen if you were never able to discover the lore name of your Witchfather? What if there is no lore name, because he's unrecorded?

And I must also ask:

Why do you need a name?

If we imagine all these named entities as being like stained glass stacked on top of each other, then they all combine together to influence the concept of the Horned God archetype. There seems to be a shape illuminated in this symphony that resonates with you.

So why not just cut out that same shape from black paper and let the light shine through it?

That's the shape of your god, I imagine.

You do not need a name. You can start with what you know. Writing your own poetry and hymns is a good way to start.

"To the Nameless God seen in the reflection of polished horns." That kind of thing, you know. Where do you see him? How do you know him? Write it down. Record the traces of him you find like a biologist lovingly recording tracks of a rare animal.

"To the Witchfather whom I know by feel but not by name, the hidden one that calls to me from the spring green fog." What feels right? Is he not behind a green fog? I think you would know. Maybe he is behind sheets of rain, crashing onto the rock in a cacophony.

He's got epithets. You will know them because you will be able to feel if they're right or not. Is he the Thunder-Blackened Face of the Battle-Oak? Is he the Jewel-Drenched Meadow of the Summer Rains? Is he the Frozen, Endless Lake?

It's not for an archetype. You're not trying to define the archetype, right. You're just trying to outline a guy you know has to be in there.

For offerings, for rituals, it's all the same. "To the North I call the Hidden One who exhales stars, whose hoofprints make lakes and valleys, who carries the sun and moon on his horns."

How do you work with someone if you don't know their nature?

But I think you do know his nature. I think you know his nature very well, but you are trying to pin it to one of a handful of very popular gods, which of course it does not fit.

If, in your practice, snags and knots in your sewing are indicative of maledictive magic, unwanted influences, or the "evil eye", here is a quick charm to shake of the negativity and send it back upon its sender.

When your sewing knots, undo the last stitch and use your needle or a seam ripper to either work lose or cut the knot while saying:

Fie! Fie! A needle in your eye! Be returned upon your maker--afar or nigh!

O Divine Father,

Lord of Chaos, Lord of Ma’at,

Fearsome Son of Nut and Geb,

I bring to you offerings, I bring to you my adoration!

Foremost Protector of the Barque,

Anoint us with your light and power,

So that we may be blessed with your might

So that we may be blessed by your glory!

May we bring you strength, just as you strengthen us.

May we bring you peace, just as you soothe our anger.

Literally going around and meeting the archangels/monarchs/guardians/gatekeepers (etc/whatever) of the four elemental roads. Just shaking hands and saying hi. Asking for their support, patience, and grace in working with them and their domains.

Brief introduction to the structure you live in, or absent of that, the land you live on.

Choosing your top 5 personal favorite kitchen spices, one or two nice rocks, and the nearest convenient tree and just doing a series of private rituals to meet them one by one.

Because then by the time you want to get started with other stuff, like finding familiar spirits, learning new skills, or solving problems, you already have met several spirits who are likely to be easily invoked to stand by your side and offer protection, assistance, and guidance for the task at hand.

Just because you don't know any spirits on a friendship level doesn't mean you have to be alone. You can still have spirits standing with you to help and ensure things go well. You can lay a compass, call forth the elemental gods, and ask them to provide assistance for the duration of the ritual. You can ask them to send a teacher or a guide to you to help you with something important.

i'd like to feed my tarot deck with incense smoke but its like.. i dont even think i charged the incense stick correctly in the first place. ykwim?

like.. thinking really hard and imagining the incense stick full of energy doesnt make it feel any different to me so idk maybe im js making this too complicated.

Don't visualize energy just suddenly existing now. Find a place where energy should be and visualize energy coming out of it and going into the other thing.

Visualizing = visual thinking. Any kind of thinking will work. It doesn't have to be pictures.

But the energy doesn't come from nowhere. Gather it out of the air, from your body, from the moon - get it from somewhere first. Drag it, push it, pull it towards the incense.

Quick hack: put energy into your words by using belief to hammer willpower into your words. Give yourself temporary permission to have very strong belief and believe really hard your words carry your personal power in them. Say words like 'I charge the incense' and your personal energy will be dragged out of you like an anchor drags a rope. Once the power leaves you, the words will try to do what they are.

*Powerful as compared to other techniques that work worse.

A common spellcasting method is to immediately deploy the spell once the casting is complete. In fact, deployment is often a part of the casting ritual in and of itself.

A different option is to keep the spell vessel in a state of magical gestation over a period of days or weeks, so that it slowly matures, gains strength, and solidifies, until it's born into this world, ushered by your hands.

This method is opposed to one where huge amounts of energy need to be raised at once. It's not a technique I'm able to manage in a sustainable way, and I find the results to be a little too... jittery.

If you are a witch who must not, or may not, raise lots of energy at once, this technique may be more manageable. It involves supervising a pot of spell, a bit like a simmering pot of stew, but overall I find it to be less of a draining process. Perhaps other people will find the same.

I believe that creating a magical seed (or embryo, if you like), and tying it to a physical object - such as a candle, crystal, piece of jewelry, charm bag, poppet, and so on - is in and of itself a powerful act of magic. This is why a candle can be enchanted, immediately burned, and still result in miraculous effects.

However, I also believe that giving the seed time to magically gestate can produce deeply powerful, effective, and long-lasting (or perhaps better to say, permanent) results. This isn't the same as completing a casting and letting the enchantment sit until you're ready to use it - it's an active process of nurturing.

Instead of immediately sending a spell to go out and work, sending it to a gestation phase is an easy change. If our spellcasting methodologies are anything alike, all you've got to do (in crude terms) is to swap out your targeting/release portion of the spell with an introduction to the magical womb, or egg, or embryonic sack, (&etc), within which the spell will grow and gain strength.

Examples:

If you direct energy as you raise it, instead of chanting, focusing, writing, or affirming that the spell goes to the target as you raise the energy, instead C/F/W/A that the spell goes into the gestational vessel.

If you gather energy and imprint/program it before you deploy it, send it to the gestational vessel instead of the target.

If you fully enchant a spell vessel (such as enchanting a candle, or creating a poppet), after the spellcasting is complete, instruct the new spell to rest and grow strong within the gestational vessel, until it's time to be fully born.

After the spell is cast, and you have magically moved the spell into its gestation phase, the spell components should be placed securely within the gestational vessel and tended to until they're ready to be born.

The "gestational vessel" is a physical object - in Traditional Witchcraft, this is most suitably the cauldron. But the gestational vessel only needs to meet a few qualifications, regardless of its ability to make campfire stews:

The gestational vessel must have a secure lid, even a makeshift lid, which blocks out the light.

It must be large enough to completely hold the physical components of the spell which it gestates.

It must be able to be stored without disruption, where no unqualified persons may accidentally remove the lid or disturb it.

Additionally:

Moving the vessel doesn't seem to typically disrupt what's growing inside. It can be taken down from a shelf, etc.; as long as the lid isn't opened without due cause.

I do not personally consecrate gestational vessels to that special purpose. I tend to use multi-use vessel which I'll use for other things later.

When the spell is inside of the magical egg (tired of saying gestation), it becomes your job to tend to it by providing energy. This can take many forms, and is an intuitive process.

Feeding the spell can be done in any manner which you usually recharge objects, or provide offerings to spirits. The line is blurred here, I think.

Feed the spell more of what you fed it in order to create it; that is, more of the same energy you raised, more of the same emotion you spent, and so on.

If preferred, feed the spell food, candle, and incense offerings. A general offering of "white light," or another creative energy, also does well here.

Intuition may advise that different foods are wanted by the spell at different times. Do with that as you please.

Those able to "tune in" to the energies of their spells and environment may find it to be very easy to keep track of the embryonic spell's hunger. Otherwise, follow a simple schedule.

I usually do not find that spells need to be fed every day, and when they require feeding, I do not find that they respond to huge amounts of energy or offerings.

Feeding about every three days is a safer bet for me.

I notice that an excess of provided energy just seems to pool up and go to waste.

A feeding may be as simple as placing a bit of your dinner next to the gestation vessel along with an offering charm, or if you're able to, lighting a single tea light.

Persons interested in psychism may have an excellent time noting the energetic change in the spell as the gestation develops.

The lid may be carefully opened to peek inside, especially if normally helpful intuition fails without peeking in; but treat the vessel gently, as if a tiny embryonic baby chicken is inside. Be quiet and gentle, and avoid disrupting the lid unless you really need to.

Ahead of time, before you even cast the spell, you should have decided how long you're going to gestate it for. Three days, or a full moon cycle, or dark to full moon, are a good bet; so is one week if you're doing a planetary thing. I find that even a shorter gestation period provides delightful results compared to doing none at all.

Intuition may advise that the spell is ready to be born early, or would like to stay a little longer.

If intuition is not your ally in these matters, follow the schedule you've set. All will be well.

The appointed time has arrived - the spell is to be born! (Celestial enthusiasts may be wise the the idea of birthing their spell at a special hour, day, or election).

Frankly, popping off the vessel lid, saying, "your time of rest is done, you are now at full power, go now and begin your duties" will perfectly suffice.

But better can be achieved.

If possible, consider employing a birthing ritual. Here are ideas, in no particular order:

Symbols of a gateway or passageway are very good, even something as simple as two stones or two candles to mark a 'gate'.

Using an actual doorway, especially moving from indoors to outdoors (or vice-versa, depending on the nature of your spell).

Using a hag stone to represent pulling the spell from the faerie world into our physical one; the reverse process of how such a stone is often employed.

Using a family tradition, or religious or cultural tradition, to celebrate the birth of a new baby; even if this tradition is only symbolically simulated through key points ("I am the grandpa of this family, and as the grandpa, I announce the new baby's name!")

Doing something celebratory and evocative, like that Lion King scene where Rafiki holds up baby Simba, etc.

In general, the spell should be removed from the gestation pot in a ritualistic way, glistening with the gravity of ushering new life into this world.

The spell may be carefully taken from the vessel and passed through a doorway or liminal space; symbolically drawn through a hag stone or other physically impassable space; held up to greet the first light of the day, or the light of a certain moon phase; be passed over a fire; or any number of ritualistic acts to denote movement into a new phase of life.

At this time, you should magically assert that the spell is born, and ready to do its task.

Of course, you do more. And in these matters, I find that more is better.

A christening ceremony, or a baptism, is most excellently employed to further empower this new life to be a living being in our world, capable of great influence and change - as we all imagine our children will be.

A bit of anointing oil, a touch of holy water, a formal naming ceremony ("I name you, My Paycheck is Cleared. Your name is My Paycheck is Cleared."), whatever you like - especially include a small gift to the spell (perhaps a few coins to set it on the right path in life), or - I suppose this post has gotten long enough. You can perhaps imagine what more could be done.

When all is said and done, employ the spell; light it if it's a candle, whisper things to it if it's a poppet, hang it up if it's supposed to be hung up, and so on.

Do mind that such things, having being born into this world and given real life, do not tend to quit it so quickly as only bornless energies that are diffused just as they were raised; like waves, forming and dissipating.

Things with birthdays and names and birthday presents and baptisms and godparents tend to feel as if this world is theirs, too.

I am generally not very much of a "be careful" sort of poster, but for this sort of technique, I'd recommend being careful. It really does work fantastically, and that's the problem.

I know that lightning happens when there are more electrons in the clouds then there are protons on the ground and that it strikes randomly. I can still believe that Zeus guides it down on its way from the sky.

I know that earthquakes happen due to the shifting teutonic plates grinding against each other. I can still that Poseidon shapes where and how they strike.

I know that the moon and sun rise and set because of the earth's rotation. I can still believe that Helios and Selene are the Moon and Sun and that Apollo and Artemis guide them.