ITS ALL ABOUT INTENT
you can have done all the research you can have planned everything out you can have the best ingredients you can have done the perfect blessing you can know the spell off by heart
BUT IF YOU DON’T HOLD YOUR INTENT IN YOUR MIND’S EYE WHILE CASTING…. well… things are gonna get fucked up
SO! Before casting anything - PAUSE to clear your mind, concentrate and FRAME your intent, then WORK your magic!
No, actually it isn’t about intent.
This is an incredibly recent and new development in the history of magic mostly only propagated by eclectic witches and that tradition is also very contemporary.
Classical magic has nothing to do with intent. It has everything to do with rigorous training in psychic development and following the directions because the tech itself is powerful. And very old. This is why things like absolute n00bs fucking with Classical magic like the Ars Goetia can still get manifestations and severe accidents and get into some deep shit as a result even with very little psychic development or ritual experience–sometimes with none at all.
Truth be told “intention” is a very weak force and a very weak way to drive your magic. Concentrating very very hard may work for you if you have mild psychism but it is very sloppy and uncontrolled in most people and doesn’t get you very far.
And before anyone goes off about chaos magic being about intention I’ll have you know that gnosis or reaching an altered state of consciousness is not the same as intention at all. It is a way of accessing an enhanced psychic state to drive the magic through. Things like Spare’s death posture, sexual orgasm, extreme periods of sleep deprivation or food fasting are not intention driven. Like Classical magic they are structured and tech driven and actually get someone to a liminal spiritual place where they can engage spirits or natural magical laws and forces. That requires leverage for success.
There is very little by means of the history of magic, and you can source it, that suggests intention is a favored method by our spiritual ancestors. That’s firstly because it’s a relatively recent modality and secondly it’s because magic and the tech of magic actually is quite universal across traditions and the tech changes very little over time even with differences in cultural spirit preferences and modalities. That’s because it objectively works and our foregoers didn’t need to change it. Otherwise they would have been using intent as a model by now. Don’t you think?
An intention in the correct context is nothing more than the thing you seek to achieve with your ritual and even then not all rituals need to have one.
If you go through the history of magic in the West there is very little to support the notion of concentrating very hard. Which from what I can gather is most of the mindset of both people on Tumblr and New Age forms of magic like neopaganism and eclectic witchcraft.
What this post really should say is that you should enhance the right tools and the right training by working your psychic development. That is what will help you drive and direct your magic alongside the proper tech. Not simply focusing until you start sweating. And no, psychic development does not simply entail practicing focusing very very hard, although it does require much of the time attention and focus of the mind.
This is an objectively untrue post and to see it on my dashboard is actually quite shocking as I’m very picky about who I follow.
I hope OP can take constructive criticism because this is far from “differences in style” and is objectively a poor method for gaining results.
Even in folk magic, it’s not about intent, so I hope nobody argues that angle. It’s about ingredients with power, it’s about tools that work, it’s about gods that do their own things if you ask. If you look at folk magic, there too is gnosis: trance, orgasm, drugs. And will. Intense will. But will is nothing without the will to hold your focus.
And @thedesertgod, I hope you’ll forgive me for the tags, but they apply to the conversation here.