do you think the law of attraction and the modern view on "manifesting whatever you want" is mostly bullshit because otherwise what's the point in doing lengthy rituals and magic when you can just supposedly think about what you want and get it .... I feel crazy on the internet
I think the fluffy idea of “manifestation based on focus and familiarity” is fundamentally different that The Great Work of Purifying the Soul and ascending/descending through various worlds/layers of reality to escape the endless cycle of reincarnation that force the Soul into the material world.
Like, if you’re doing lengthy rituals to satisfy mundane desires and wants, you’re kinda missing the point of High Magick.
Finding one’s True Self and the nature of one’s Soul is what the High Magick of most systems that have complicated rituals and symbols is about. Rituals often taken from nature or natural elements meant to convey secret technologies with which one might discover the True Self and the nature of the Soul. Often this process does not make one rich, historically, it makes the Magus pretty poor. Hermit is a word that has come to mean, ‘a pauper living in self-imposed isolation, possibly to be closer to Deity.’ So, yeah, not a lot in there about stacking money.
I’m not over here trying to tell people what to do or what to believe. There are certainly aspects of most magical systems meant to attract the magician to material goods and wealth. In most grimoires with complex rituals meant to cause instant wealth, the idea is to find buried treasure, not get a raise at work. However, in texts like the PGM and many other syncretic magical texts of that approximate period, there are some complex and some really simple rituals meant for mercantile endeavors based on the idea of sympathetic magic. So, whether it’s the new age fluffy idea of “manifestation” or ancient sympathetic magic, people have been doing rituals to get things in the material world since forever.
But to horribly paraphrase a contemporary magician, Alan Moore, why do complicated alchemy to potentially make gold when you can just do what you’re good at to make a living?
