I regularly and strongly advocate for magickal routine and practice. If I had to give a student only two pieces of magickal advice they would be: meditate, and have a daily practice. Magick is no different from any other skill: practice, practice, practice if you want to achieve anything. If you don’t have a magickal practice, compare the work you are doing with learning to play the piano (or any other instrument if you already know the piano). If you played the piano as much as, and for as long as, you’re doing your magickal practice, how long do you think it would take you to master that song? For a lot of us, and I’ve been there, the answer is way too long.
Practice; magick is a skill and a capacity, it’s something that needs to be exercised and worked with. It is the Great Work after all, emphasis on Work. Honestly you don’t necessarily have to do much, either in terms of intensity or duration, the important thing is the regularity. I know there have been times where I’ve pruned my working routine down to 5-10 minutes a day for a few months, but I can tell you that 5-10 minutes made all the difference when I started to get back into a more regular practice.
That said: shake up your routine.
Back when I was in better shape I had no trouble getting down on the ground and doing 100 push-ups. When I was able to do 100 at a time, I decided to shake up my route a bit using a push-up variant, the diamond push-up. (To do the diamond push-up you get into position normally, but then move your hands together with you thumbs and index fingers touching forming a diamond shape.) Even though the exercises are so similar I had trouble doing more than 10, because the muscles it uses weren’t the ones I exercised previously, even though they were essentially beside the other set of muscles. So my daily routine was great about getting me in shape, but it was also limited, as shown by the fact that simply shifting my hands meant I could barely do 10% of my normal ability.
Our energy bodies, our magickal selves, are much the same. A daily practice is the best way to keep yourself in the best shape, but like a push-up routine, it’s limited. Doing a daily practice works certain “muscles” and abilities, unfortunately. I try my best to avoid this, and usually change up a lot of my daily practice every month. Even still this is limited because I’m picking what I’m doing. I’m deciding what I’ll no longer do, and what will replace it. Even if i’m trying to shake it up, I’m still limiting myself based on my preferences, assumptions, understanding and a variety of other factors. To get around this my current experiment is randomly picking a book and working through the activities in the text.
For me I rolled a die, assigning each magickal bookcase in my temple a number. Then I rolled against how many shelves on the book case, to get one shelf. Then rolling to decide left/right side. And I continue breaking the shelf down in halves, until I’m left with a single book. For the next month, part of my daily practice is from this random book. Depending on the book I might try to do every practice in it at least once. Even if you’re very familiar with a basic practice like grounding or casting a circle, you might be surprised at how different (or difficult) doing it according to other instructions can be. You’re working different magickal muscles.
I find this is a great way to make sure I’m actually using books (as opposed to being a book hoarder…), as well as including a variety of practices to keep myself in the best shape. Like the physical body, if you can keep the energetic body in better well-rounded shape, you’ll be better equipped to handle whatever comes your way.
Tune in for my next post where I completely contradict this advice.