MAKING MAGIC WORK FOR YOU

Several years back, much earlier in my practice and development, I had a good friend who reached out in need of help. He had lent someone a significant amount of money, and though they agreed at the onset to pay him back, he reported that they started to hedge on their promise. His not receiving that money back would have devastated his life, based on everything he said to me.

I had a few spirits I was learning to work with, but few of them had come through strong yet. But that day, one of my spirits did. Very much so. Someone within my spiritual cuadro that was new to me, who I hadn’t even established much understanding about how to work with her. But she came through STRONG. And with her presence came a strong download of specific work to do with her.

What threw me at that moment wasn’t that she was talking so much. Or even that she stood up to assist me in helping my bud. What THREW me was the specific work she gave me. The things she instructed me to do were not things I knew or understood to be something that went together. Yes, I had worked with them separately and in different situations. Cussing someone out. Banging a machete on the ground. And fire, LOTS of fire.

But I knew enough of them to know better than not to do what that spirit gave me to do. And I kid you not, my friend had all his money back in three days, precisely when she said it would return!

What I learned at that time was that it is okay, and even necessary, for me to make my magic work for me. Yes, tradition is important. It is vital to me as an ATR practitioner. There is a way to do things that get consistent results, and more importantly, it connects me to a long line of egguns who did the same thing. So when I follow the traditions, I am not just doing it with the energy of now. I am doing it with the power of countless ancestral spirits who went before me. Even my saying that does not entirely capture the mystery of it, but it is what it is.

Tradition is important, but it only carries you to a point. At some point, a trust needs to be established where your spirits teach you the stuff that tradition alone cannot and will not. This is because tradition is valuable and valuable. It’s because there are mysteries and ways of working that are authentic to you and your spirits that only they can teach. I think this is often misunderstood, to be honest. I think the misunderstanding leads to people thinking teachers like me can teach that, but none of us can. What we can teach is the foundation. We can teach our version of tradition that gives your tree roots from which you and your spirits grow and branch.

I get it, though. We live in an age of instant information, of many people teaching many things. But we also live in a time of Covid and other social problems that make many of us feel we need something clear and specific to deal with. The problem is that we need more than tradition alone to get what we need. The tradition is more like a means to an end than the end itself. In my spiritual work, especially with spirits, the story I told above has repeated itself so many times with so many different spirits that I trust what I am given to bring relief and aid to folks. I know it will work because they have shown it WILL.

Now, I don’t want to romanticize any of this. We are all different, develop differently, and have different skills, gifts, and talents. Some people I know can work with or pass spirits with little effort. Others, like me, have had to work through a lot of challenges to have a consistent practice. The difference I encountered was who my elders were. If I had controlled elders and not worked with me to build my confidence, my development would be slow. If a mentor had an ulterior motive for keeping me in a relationship of dependence with them, my development was slow. But when an elder encouraged me to trust myself, I grew.

Making your magic work for you is fundamental to any spiritual practice. The medium doesn’t matter to me: chaos magic, Solomonic magic, PGM magic, Lucumi, Abakua, etc. Any of them should bring you to the place where however that system works takes you to a practice authentic and unique to you. The methods may not be unique, but how you carry them out should, over time, reflect how you perceive the spirit world. It should reflect a protocol you follow to connect to your spirits, herbs, or astral energies to make things happen as you need. It is not a dismissal from a teacher for you to be on your own unless you choose to be. Following a tradition should connect you to others who walk that same path, even if you walk it differently.

I hope everyone reading this finds their own way to this authentic place. It is what will carry you through the long haul of a lifetime practice.