{"id":14061,"date":"2018-04-01T01:10:45","date_gmt":"2018-04-01T06:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=17675"},"modified":"2018-04-02T16:09:59","modified_gmt":"2018-04-02T21:09:59","slug":"interview-with-jason-miller-spellcrafting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2018\/04\/01\/interview-with-jason-miller-spellcrafting\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Jason Miller: Author & Strategic Sorcerer, About His Latest Book that offers Keys for Better Spellcrafting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There are a few cows Jason Miller does not consider sacred, including the reverence for the do-it-yourself approach and the notion that magick should only be used in emergencies. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A sorcerer from New Jersey who practices and teaches magick professionally, his latest book, \u201cThe Elements of Spellcrafting: 21 Keys to Successful Sorcery<\/strong>,\u201d is a magickal manual to go deeper and get more out of witchcraft.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Miller was given the name Inominandum, which means \u201che who cannot be named\u201d by a spirit in the 27th Athyr. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt fits my attitude towards magic,\u201d he wrote in his <\/span><\/span><\/span>strategicsorcery.blogspot.com<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/u><\/span><\/span><\/span>, \u201cthe moment you and your work can be completely described by an \u2018<\/span><\/span><\/span>ism<\/span><\/span>\u2019 or a label like \u2018Buddhist\u2019 or \u2018<\/span><\/span><\/span>Chaos<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u2019 or \u2018<\/span><\/span><\/span>Hermetic<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u2019 you are setting yourself up for a huge obstacle to hurtle later in your practice. As Krishnamurti wisely said,<\/span><\/span><\/span> \u2018Truth is a pathless land,\u2019 and the last thing that must be given up before crossing to the other side of the abyss is the very boat that took you across.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

His interest in the occult was sparked by an incident on the playground when he was 5. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what happened beforehand. Maybe I was hit in the head, maybe not, maybe it was just a weird mental shift for no reason, but I looked down at the ground and I remember looking at the sand \u2026 and then looking up, but instead of looking up and seeing the playground and everything else, I looked up and all of reality was at my feet. It was as if the world became a two-dimensional painting and I looked away from it. I\u2019ve had this sense ever after that reality was this show and there was stuff going on behind the curtain.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The memory of that never faded.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn some ways, that moment of looking away felt more real then reality feels. And so I was always left with this nagging little piece of my brain that told me that what we see as firm and concrete is not as firm and concrete as you think, and that there are things going on behind the scenes.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

That led Miller to explore magic and mysticism in his teen years.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI asked my parents to start taking me to church and started exploring magic as it related to Christianity, and the grimoires, and so on, and then I found paganism.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

He took up the practice of both high m<\/span>agick and <\/span>h<\/span>oodoo <\/span>rootworking while still a teenager, learning how ceremonial and folk m<\/span>agic<\/span>k can work together and compliment each other. When he discovered spellwork and spirits, and was able to do invocations with some success, he knew it he wanted to devote his life to it. And he has.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

He traveled to New Orleans to study Hoodoo, Europe to study witchcraft and c<\/span>eremonial <\/span>magick, and Nepal to study tantra. Miller is an initiated Tantrika in the Nyingma and Bon lineages of Tibet, an ordained Gnostic Bishop, and a member of the Chthonic Ouranian Temple and the Sangreal Sodality.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I found in Nepal was a practice that embraced both the very complex ceremonial magic and pretty simple hedge magic and folk magic, and blended them seamlessly together. I also found a practice that was rooted in mysticism and direct experience, rather than blind belief. \u2026 It forever changed my view of how magic works, of what was important,\u201d he said in an interview last month.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Many of the ideas about magick that have become sacred cows he has found not to be true. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI deal with a lot of these in my book Elements of Spellcrafting,\u201d Miller said. \u201cI have a whole chapter in the book called \u2018DYI is Over Rated.\u2019<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou see people a lot saying things like, \u2018Any spell that you write yourself is going to be more powerful than something you learned\u2019 or \u2018Any tool that you make yourself is going to be more powerful than something you purchase. Any oil that you make yourself \u2013 whatever it is, there is this do-it-yourself ethos in Western magic, in paganism, especially.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

While it serves its purpose, taken to the extreme it can cut you off, he said. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one thing to say that developing the skills and training necessary to be able to innovate is the best way to do things. That I think is correct. But this idea that right from the start, anything that your brain farts out is going to be better than anything that people have spent enormous time recording, and in some cases hiding at great personal cost, it undercuts the idea that witchcraft is a craft. A craft is something that you learn, that you practice, that you study, that you gain first competency in and then mastery in, and that you stand on the shoulders of giants. You learn what came first and also you recognize the fact that you can\u2019t master everything in life.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Miller described himself saying, \u201cI am a witch in the sense that I do magic that is rooted in folk magic sometimes. I do magic that is rooted in intuition. I do magic that is rooted in the nocturnal and in the feminine at times. But I\u2019m not only a witch. I\u2019m also a magician. I call myself a sorcerer. We straddle both of those worlds.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo one has the full picture\u201d and no one \u201cknows all the great secrets of magic or the universe or mysticism. \u2026 I personally think that we don\u2019t even have the capacity to hold that information yet as human beings.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There are master crafters who specialize in their respective fields, making such things as athames, oils, drums and candles. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt depends what you want,\u201d he said. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can take a weekend course to make an athame. There\u2019s something to be learned from the doing, there\u2019s an alchemy to it that is important,\u201d but I it will not be the same as one made by a master. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know how to make my own oils but I don\u2019t find them more powerful than oil from Wolf and Goat<\/a>, just because I made it. There\u2019s a certain reverence for the do it yourself that cuts people off from taking advantage of and also appreciating people that master a craft.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Different situations call for different things and there is a place for doing things yourself, but \u201cthat holding it up as this incredible power in and of itself is false,\u201d Miller said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Another sacred cow he shuns is that magic should be done in emergencies only, after everything else has failed. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t hear this as much anymore, but when I was coming up, this was a big thing. \u2026 You would hear also, \u2018People that go for magic for selfish reasons, it\u2019ll blow up on them,\u2019 and none of this, none of this is true. None of this is true. First of all, if you\u2019re doing magic only when urgencies happen, there are two problems. One, you\u2019re already in the emergency, so by definition, you are managing destruction, your plane is crashing, you\u2019re just trying to decide if you can land in the Hudson or crash into a building. It\u2019s too late to save the business, just figure out how to minimize the damage. And here\u2019s one of the great dangers of magic, too. We can prolong things that are better off ending. \u2026<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cProblem two is because magic is a craft. Witchcraft, as far as spells go, it is a craft. Sorcery is a craft. You have to be good at it in order to make full use of it. \u2026 That\u2019s why emergency magic is bad. If that\u2019s the only time you\u2019re using magic, something already went wrong.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Spells used in emergencies tend to have a higher frequency of success, likely because of the energy, approach, zeal and ardor put into the spell, but not because you are more deserving at that time.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Miller dismisses the idea of selfishness.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is this idea that if you ask for money, the spirits will be angry with you, the gods will be angry with you. They don\u2019t care. Money is not a bad thing. It\u2019s not unspiritual,\u201d he said, urging, \u201cGo for what you think you don\u2019t deserve. \u2026 In this book, I talk about blowing that out of the water entirely, just blasting against the idea that you deserve or don\u2019t deserve anything.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is this idea that if you don\u2019t deserve something, then your spell work might not grab it as well, but it has nothing to do with whether you deserve it or not, it had to do with what you feel you might deserve.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Olympians who get the bronze medal didn\u2019t start out shooting for the bronze, he said, urging, \u201cGo for the gold of whatever it is you want.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Go big. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

He noted that \u201ca shocking amount of people\u201d with whom he\u2019s spoken \u201cwant to do money magic, they want to improve their financial lives \u2013 but not too much\u201d because that would take them out of their comfort zone.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLet go of the idea of need. Let go of the idea of yes or no, black or white.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

If a spell did not work, it\u2019s not because the caster is not deserving, but rather they\u2019re \u201cshooting for something that unenchantable, they\u2019re not approaching it from different angles, or there\u2019s a technical failure like they\u2019re not using a clear link to get what they want to occur or influence the people they want to influence.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The idea that intention is all that matters is another of the sacred cows Miller dismisses.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Everything matters is the fourth of the 21 keys he offers in \u201cThe Elements of Spellcrafting.\u201d The fifth is that not everything is necessary.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Equating spellcrafting to cooking, he said. \u201cI like to make gumbo in my new Instant Pot. Gumbo has a ton of ingredients. The first few times I made it, I followed the recipe that I was given exactly and the third or fourth time I made it, I didn\u2019t have any frozen okra and I had to put a little more celery in and I was also having someone over who doesn\u2019t eat pork, so I left out the andouille sausage and doubled down on the shrimp and the chicken. Did I still make gumbo? Yes, of course I made gumbo, but it was different than the gumbo that I had made previously. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNow let\u2019s say I decided that making a roux is a pain in the butt, you have to sit there, stirring this mixture of butter and flour for 10 or 15 minutes until it becomes the color of peanut butter. If you let it go for even two seconds, the crap will burn. Let\u2019s just say I decide not to do a roux. I\u2019m just going to cook it like a soup. Am I still making gumbo? No, because the essential ingredient that makes it creole cooking with that thickening agent of the roux is gone. I have not made gumbo, and that\u2019s okay. Soup is good, too. Yes, we can take things out of their original context, but we no longer should call it that same thing. We can replace some ingredients and say this is that thing but with this particular spin, and maybe it will make it better. Maybe you will add an element that really amps it up, or maybe not.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Back to spells, Miller described a time he found himself without a red candle to summon a particular spirit. Instead, he used a red glass lantern and a white tea light candle. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt actually kicked things up a notch because while the wax wasn\u2019t red, there was a glow, so it changed it a little bit because it wasn\u2019t burning off that red as an offering, but giving red light for the spirit to manifest it. The dynamics of the ritual changed, but it was still successful.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo those are the things that people have to remember: everything matters but not everything is necessary. People really need to get out of this yes or no, either I have to do it by the book or just anything goes dichotomy and start looking in the middle of the spectrum.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Highly eclectic practitioners may know that what they did works, but do not necessarily know how well it worked, or if it could have been done faster or with less discomfort. It\u2019s important to stop asking if it worked and evaluating how it worked.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNow we\u2019re starting to think like spellcrafters and sorcerers,\u201d Miller said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Cartoons featuring sorcerer and a demon \u2013 drawn by Mathew Brownlee, an occultist and tattoo artist, while sitting with Miller in a bar in Philadelphia \u2013 introduces each chapter. The one paired with sane eclecticism has the sorcerer holding up a phurba, a Tibetan three-sided dagger, saying, \u201cBy this holy phurba of Odin! I call thee Jeeezusss!\u2019 The demon has a hand in front of his eyes and says, \u201cThat\u2019s not how any of this works.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Some people, Miller said, will \u201cgrab a phurba at a new age shop and they\u2019ll say, \u2018This is my wonderful athame’ and that\u2019s not at all what it\u2019s used for in Tibet. It\u2019s a dagger, a nail. And then sometimes I\u2019ll give a talk and talk about phurba practice and some of my experiences and people will say, \u2018Yes, I do phurba practice, too,\u2019 and what happens is that they bought a phurba somewhere and they dance around their living room with it and basically use it in either ceremonial magic or witchcraft and they don\u2019t know anything at all about it from the Tibetan perspective. So this is where eclecticism sort of goes off the rails. It\u2019s fine, just \u2026 stop confusing it with the original thing.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When something is taken out of context, different terminology is appropriate. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is where I believe in eclecticism \u2013 I believe that eclecticism is the gift of the sage \u2013 that multiculturalism, the openness and some access to so many different avenues of knowledge and practice \u2013 but we have to approach that gift with sincerity and respect and some amount of intelligence and awareness.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

By providing 21 keys to successful sorcery, from \u2018Know What Magic Actually Does\u2019 to \u2018Maintain Sovereignty,\u2019 Miller hopes readers will optimize the magic they do. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s start turning our attention to deepening our experiences and doing things that change our lives and really matter in the long run,\u201d he said, concluding the interview.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Elements of Spellcrafting” details 21 keys best practices grouped into three sections: principals and strategies for how best to apply magic before you begin, methods and tactics that will ensure a positive outcome, and how to take spells to the next level. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Miller is the author of \u201cProtection and Reversal Magick: A Witch\u2019s Defense Manual,\u201d \u201cThe Sorcerer\u2019s Secrets: Strategies in Practical Magic,\u201d \u201cFinancial Sorcery: Magical Strategies to Create Real and Lasting Wealth,\u201d and \u201cSex, Sorcery, and Spirit: The Secrets of Erotic Magic.\u201d He teaches and blogs about strategic sorcery.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Learn more at <\/span><\/span><\/span>http:\/\/www.inominandum.com\/home.html<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/u><\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Click Image for Amazon Information<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

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*<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span>**<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

About the Author:<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Lynn Woike<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>\u00a0was 50 \u2013 divorced and living on her own for the first time \u2013 before she consciously began practicing as a self taught solitary witch. She draws on an eclectic mix of old ways she has studied \u2013 from her Sicilian and Germanic heritage to Zen and astrology, the fae, Buddhism, Celtic, the Kabbalah, Norse and Native American \u2013 pulling from each as she is guided. She practices yoga, reads Tarot and uses Reiki. From the time she was little, she has loved stories, making her job as the editor of two monthly newspapers seem less than the work it is because of the stories she gets to tell. She lives with her large white cat, Pyewacket, in central Connecticut. You can follow her boards on\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>Pinterest<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>, and write to her at woikelynn\u00a0at gmail\u00a0dot com. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are a few cows Jason Miller does not consider sacred, including the reverence for the do-it-yourself approach and the notion that magick should only be used in emergencies. A sorcerer from New Jersey who practices and teaches magick professionally, his latest book, \u201cThe Elements of Spellcrafting: 21 Keys to Successful Sorcery,\u201d is a magickal manual to go deeper and get more out of witchcraft. Miller was given the name Inominandum, which means \u201che who cannot be named\u201d by a spirit in the 27th Athyr. \u201cIt fits my attitude towards magic,\u201d he wrote in his strategicsorcery.blogspot.com, \u201cthe moment you and your work can be completely described by an \u2018ism\u2019 or a label like \u2018Buddhist\u2019 or \u2018Chaos\u2019 or \u2018Hermetic\u2019 you are setting yourself up for a huge obstacle to hurtle later in your practice. As Krishnamurti wisely said, \u2018Truth is a pathless land,\u2019 and the last thing that must be given up before crossing to the other side of the abyss is the very boat that took you across.\u2019\u201d His interest in the occult was sparked by an incident on the playground when he was 5. \u201cI don\u2019t know what happened beforehand. Maybe I was hit in the head, maybe not, maybe it was just a weird mental shift for no reason, but I looked down at the ground and I remember looking at the sand \u2026 and then looking up, but instead of looking up and seeing the playground and everything else, I looked up and all of reality was at my feet. It was as if the world became a two-dimensional painting and I looked away from it. I\u2019ve had this sense ever after that reality was this show and there was stuff going on behind the curtain.\u201d The memory of that never faded. \u201cIn some ways, that moment of looking away felt more real then reality feels. And so I was always left with this nagging little piece of my brain that told me that what we see as firm and concrete is not as firm and concrete as you think, and that there are things going on behind the scenes.\u201d That led Miller to explore magic and mysticism in his teen years. \u201cI asked my parents to start taking me to church and started exploring magic as it related to Christianity, and the grimoires, and so on, and then I found paganism.\u201d He took up the practice of both high magick and hoodoo rootworking while still a teenager, learning how ceremonial and folk magick can work together and compliment each other. When he discovered spellwork and spirits, and was able to do invocations with some success, he knew it he wanted to devote his life to it. And he has. He traveled to New Orleans to study Hoodoo, Europe to study witchcraft and ceremonial magick, and Nepal to study tantra. Miller is an initiated Tantrika in the Nyingma and Bon lineages of Tibet, an ordained Gnostic Bishop, and a member of the Chthonic Ouranian Temple and the Sangreal Sodality. \u201cWhat I found in Nepal was a practice that embraced both the very complex ceremonial magic and pretty simple hedge magic and folk magic, and blended them seamlessly together. I also found a practice that was rooted in mysticism and direct experience, rather than blind belief. \u2026 It forever changed my view of how magic works, of what was important,\u201d he said in an interview last month. Many of the ideas about magick that have become sacred cows he has found not to be true. \u201cI deal with a lot of these in my book Elements of Spellcrafting,\u201d Miller said. \u201cI have a whole chapter in the book called \u2018DYI is Over Rated.\u2019 \u201cYou see people a lot saying things like, \u2018Any spell that you write yourself is going to be more powerful than something you learned\u2019 or \u2018Any tool that you make yourself is going to be more powerful than something you purchase. Any oil that you make yourself \u2013 whatever it is, there is this do-it-yourself ethos in Western magic, in paganism, especially.\u201d While it serves its purpose, taken to the extreme it can cut you off, he said. \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to say that developing the skills and training necessary to be able to innovate is the best way to do things. That I think is correct. But this idea that right from the start, anything that your brain farts out is going to be better than anything that people have spent enormous time recording, and in some cases hiding at great personal cost, it undercuts the idea that witchcraft is a craft. A craft is something that you learn, that you practice, that you study, that you gain first competency in and then mastery in, and that you stand on the shoulders of giants. You learn what came first and also you recognize the fact that you can\u2019t master everything in life.\u201d Miller described himself saying, \u201cI am a witch in the sense that I do magic that is rooted in folk magic sometimes. I do magic that is rooted in intuition. I do magic that is rooted in the nocturnal and in the feminine at times. But I\u2019m not only a witch. I\u2019m also a magician. I call myself a sorcerer. We straddle both of those worlds.\u201d \u201cNo one has the full picture\u201d and no one \u201cknows all the great secrets of magic or the universe or mysticism. \u2026 I personally think that we don\u2019t even have the capacity to hold that information yet as human beings.\u201d There are master crafters who specialize in their respective fields, making such things as athames, oils, drums and candles. \u201cIt depends what you want,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can take a weekend course to make an athame. There\u2019s something to be learned from the doing, there\u2019s an alchemy to it that is important,\u201d but I it will not be the same as one made by a master. \u201cI know how to make my own oils but I don\u2019t find them more powerful than oil from Wolf and Goat, just because I made it. There\u2019s a certain reverence for the do it yourself that cuts people off from taking advantage of and also appreciating people that master a craft.\u201d Different situations call for different things and there is a place for doing things yourself, but \u201cthat holding it up as this incredible power in and of itself is false,\u201d Miller said. Another sacred cow he shuns is that magic should be done in emergencies only, after everything else has failed. \u201cYou don\u2019t hear this as much anymore, but when I was coming up, this was a big thing. \u2026 You would hear also, \u2018People that go for magic for selfish reasons, it\u2019ll blow up on them,\u2019 and none of this, none of this is true. None of this is true. First of all, if you\u2019re doing magic only when urgencies happen, there are two problems. One, you\u2019re already in the emergency, so by definition, you are managing destruction, your plane is crashing, you\u2019re just trying to decide if you can land in the Hudson or crash into a building. It\u2019s too late to save the business, just figure out how to minimize the damage. And here\u2019s one of the great dangers of magic, too. We can prolong things that are better off ending. \u2026 \u201cProblem two is because magic is a craft. Witchcraft, as far as spells go, it is a craft. Sorcery is a craft. You have to be good at it in order to make full use of it. \u2026 That\u2019s why emergency magic is bad. If that\u2019s the only time you\u2019re using magic, something already went wrong.\u201d Spells used in emergencies tend to have a higher frequency of success, likely because of the energy, approach, zeal and ardor put into the spell, but not because you are more deserving at that time. Miller dismisses the idea of selfishness. \u201cThere is this idea that if you ask for money, the spirits will be angry with you, the gods will be angry with you. They don\u2019t care. Money is not a bad thing. It\u2019s not unspiritual,\u201d he said, urging, \u201cGo for what you think you don\u2019t deserve. \u2026 In this book, I talk about blowing that out of the water entirely, just blasting against the idea that you deserve or don\u2019t deserve anything. \u201cThere is this idea that if you don\u2019t deserve something, then your spell work might not grab it as well, but it has nothing to do with whether you deserve it or not, it had to do with what you feel you might deserve.\u201d Olympians who get the bronze medal didn\u2019t start out shooting for the bronze, he said, urging, \u201cGo for the gold of whatever it is you want.\u201d Go big. He noted that \u201ca shocking amount of people\u201d with whom he\u2019s spoken \u201cwant to do money magic, they want to improve their financial lives \u2013 but not too much\u201d because that would take them out of their comfort zone. \u201cLet go of the idea of need. Let go of the idea of yes or no, black or white.\u201d If a spell did not work, it\u2019s not because the caster is not deserving, but rather they\u2019re \u201cshooting for something that unenchantable, they\u2019re not approaching it from different angles, or there\u2019s a technical failure like they\u2019re not using a clear link to get what they want to occur or influence the people they want to influence.\u201d The idea that intention is all that matters is another of the sacred cows Miller dismisses. Everything matters is the fourth of the 21 keys he offers in \u201cThe Elements of Spellcrafting.\u201d The fifth is that not everything is necessary. Equating spellcrafting to cooking, he said. \u201cI like to make gumbo in my new Instant Pot. Gumbo has a ton of ingredients. The first few times I made it, I followed the recipe that I was given exactly and the third or fourth time I made it, I didn\u2019t have any frozen okra and I had to put a little more celery in and I was also having someone over who doesn\u2019t eat pork, so I left out the andouille sausage and doubled down on the shrimp and the chicken. Did I still make gumbo? Yes, of course I made gumbo, but it was different than the gumbo that I had made previously. \u201cNow let\u2019s say I decided that making a roux is a pain in the butt, you have to sit there, stirring this mixture of butter and flour for 10 or 15 minutes until it becomes the color of peanut butter. If you let it go for even two seconds, the crap will burn. Let\u2019s just say I decide not to do a roux. I\u2019m just going to cook it like a soup. Am I still making gumbo? No, because the essential ingredient that makes it creole cooking with that thickening agent of the roux is gone. I have not made gumbo, and that\u2019s okay. Soup is good, too. Yes, we can take things out of their original context, but we no longer should call it that same thing. We can replace some ingredients and say this is that thing but with this particular spin, and maybe it will make it better. Maybe you will add an element that really amps it up, or maybe not.\u201d Back to spells, Miller described a time he found himself without a red candle to summon a particular spirit. Instead, he used a red glass lantern and a white tea light candle. \u201cIt actually kicked things up a notch because while the wax wasn\u2019t red, there was a glow, so it changed it a little bit because it wasn\u2019t burning off that red as an offering, but giving red light for the spirit to manifest it. The dynamics of the ritual changed, but it was still successful. \u201cSo those are the things that people have to remember: everything matters but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}