Witchvox Article

Author: M.T.Bargeman
Posted: January 9th. 2011
Times Viewed: 2,760

In the movie, Little Big Man, there is a scene in which Chief Dan George�s character lies down and asks the Great Spirit to take his life because he thinks it is time for him to die. He lies there a few moments, and nothing happens to him, except that it begins to rain. He gets up off the ground and tells Dustin Hoffman�s character, �Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn�t.� He is correct. It is not only faith and belief that cause our will to affect change in our world. It is the timing, as well.

If our spell, prayer, request, or whatever you would like to call it is going to work, it means that we believed strongly that our will would be done, that we have enough faith in our god (dess) that the magick will work, and our timing was right. Timing is not only the phase of the Moon, but the time in our life when we perform the magic. Sometimes, the magic does not work, not because we did not have enough faith or belief, but because there is a lesson to be learned in not getting that which we so deeply desire at the time.

The mythologies teach us to believe in ourselves and to embrace our individuality and who and what we are. Magickal workings help us learn more about ourselves as people, and what we need to work on to improve ourselves as human beings in this realm of existence. Sometimes, meditations and questions asked of the Gods and the Other People gain us insight and answers to our questions about life and how to live a better life.

Sometimes, no matter how strong our belief, no matter how strong our faith in ourselves and our spiritual path, our magick just does not work. The reasons for this are many.

Perhaps the gods wish for us to learn more before we perform that particular working. Perhaps it is not time for us to have that which we are requesting (because we are not ready) . Perhaps the god or goddess we know best, the one (s) we consider our patron or protector block our working or our will because he/she knows we are not ready for the consequences of that particular action. Sometimes, it is not time for us to know the answer to our query. There are probably a million reasons for our magickal working not to work, just as there are a million reasons why it does work.

The mythologies show the gods and the Other People helping those who are working hard to help themselves. We cannot depend on magicks to help us do the things we must do for ourselves. That is much like mundane life. We cannot depend upon others to do that which we must do for ourselves. It comes down to personal responsibility.

We cannot expect that a BanTighe will come to our aid in our home if we are not trying hard to keep it clean and trying hard to take good care of our children. We cannot expect that our mother will come and clean our house or wash our laundry- she has enough on her hands keeping her own house and laundry clean, and we are adults, supposedly responsible for ourselves.

This does not mean that the magick won�t work if we are not doing the right things in our lives all the time. Sometimes, our magick works to teach us a lesson. For every action we take, there is a consequence, and we must be prepared to face those consequences. We need have no feelings of guilt or recrimination in any way for the consequences of our actions. If we do good things, good comes back to us. If we do bad things, bad comes back to us. It is a simple fact. Energy used must be compensated for in the Universe in some way.

If we are working magicks for the wrong reasons, it may work, and we may deal with the consequences, just to learn the lesson that we must be careful with our energies and our workings. Sometimes, even though we are working magicks for the right reasons, we do not get the response we want. This is to teach us some other lesson we must learn. Perhaps the person we were trying to help with our magick cannot be helped at that time because they are not working to help themselves. The lesson here is that we cannot help someone who is not helping himself or herself. When the magick doesn�t work, it is not always about faith.

In order for any magick to work, we must have faith and we must believe in ourselves. This does not guarantee that the magic will work. It only guarantees that it has a good chance of working. We as magickal beings must be doing the correct mundane things in our lives to help ourselves. This is not a quasi-Christian piece of belief. It is a simple fact. If we are working for the wrong reasons or at the wrong time in our development along our path, then sometimes the magick just does not work. Sometimes, the magick does work, but it gets us an unexpected result, in order that we may learn an important lesson and develop further along whichever path we have chosen.

Faith, hope and belief are not always enough for our magickal endeavors to affect the change we want them to; the timing is important, too. Not just the phase of the moon and method of magick we use, but the time in our life and spiritual development must be considered, also. There are many lessons that are learned for the use of both magickal and mundane actions.

We must look for these lessons and consider them very carefully. In this way, we learn and grow along our path. If we do not learn, if we do not grow, then we become stagnant, and stagnation is surely death. No, faith is not always enough for magick to work. Belief, no matter how strong, is not always enough. Sometimes, we must learn a lesson or two before our magick creates the change we want.

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