As a magician who puts their spells on Tumblr and other spaces, I find it deeply important to review spells that I do. This usually means that the spells that don't work don't end up on here and the spells that do are. However, I'm also of the mind that magic is, in great part, a science and thus testing is almost always the foundation. What we know came from the work of previous magicians who laid down the ground for future magicians and so on.
I generally break down my spells using the elements, so:
Fire, the highest element, is the conception of the desire and the beginning of amassing psychic energy towards the spell. It is also associated with the Will to Change.
Air, the second highest, is the defining of that Will, associated with the Logos. It establishes the necessary patterns and parameters for what will become a ritual. It is the correspondences and the essential "to know"
Water is the emotional and psychic attachment. This is when we begin birthing the spell through symbolic action and ritual. Water is usually associated with the Womb, but also the Moon which represents the rectification of the above to the below.
Earth is the final manifestation of the spell, the action that draws it forth and the material substance that defines it such as a jar, candle, sigil or more.
However, in cases like orations and prayers, the Earth Element isn't always visible. We don't necessarily make a spell jar during prayers to God. So, how does that fit in? Generally, prayers can be used to achieve a change in mindset, an existential comfort. Those are the physical-mental manifestations of the oration.
Thus, a spell must have the following;
The desire for change (fire)
The knowledge of inducing change (air)
The psychic emotional pull towards change (water)
The physical action or manifestation of change (earth)
These are generally reliant on a few key forces;
Divine/Spirit Energy: being the force gathered or invoked from then astral such as through a deity or a spirit
Mental-Psychic Energy: being the resolute will to change that inspires the magician in the first place
Natural Energy: being the force harnessed by natural items or occurrences such as astrological timing, herbs, plants and oils
I generally consider most magic to Sympathia. We create an item or symbolic structure that represents a concept we wish to invoke or remove. Magic can thus be classed in two forms:
Generation: Being the Addition, Manifestation or Creation of Force
Degeneration: Being the Substraction, Banishing or Destruction of Force
If a spell is sympathia, representing a concept, then the interactions with that concept define whether we are destroying it or creating it.
This is also represented by the four elements but, for the most part, can be easily described as having a physical hypersigil that represents an abstract or higher concept like love, wealth and so on. Rituals are interactions with these forces in order to generate them in our life or retract them from our life.
When a Spell Doesn't Work
No spell is guaranteed to work. That is the good news. It means that spells are open, for the most part, with experiments. The bad news is that if a spell does work but not in the way we desire, we have to retract it, fighting fire with fire. In a sense, we're busy dealing with cosmic patterns of energy and sometimes these patterns can be chaotic if not managed or approached properly.
Unfortunately, this also means that intent is not all there is to a spell. A spell, as a hypersigil, needs to have all four elements in order to bring it down from Heaven. Just like a Pentacle is made up of smaller parts that define the usage, we require smaller parts of our sigil to channel the energy properly. I've found that spells can be, at times, very temperamental and finicky. They may fail at times due to a myriad of forces that then require troubleshooting.
The goal, here, is to not freak out but to walk through all the steps, correspondences, tools and the like and compare them, finding out which one messed with our circuit, either removing them or replacing them. Or taking a different approach entirely. When this is done, the ritual is refined further into something we can gain use from. If not, then we simply have the wisdom and knowledge we gained in order to define a new ritual.
