Book of Shadows - II
After the spell is cast it is best to forget about it (insofar as you are capable of doing this) rather than to keep ruminating / fantasizing about it (which tends to dissipate the power of the spell). Once the intent has been set up by the C.V., the only way to make it happen, to let the Spirit free to do your bidding, is to drop the concern completely. What locks the Spirit up – keeps it from helping us – is our inability to just let go and abandon ourselves to it; to just trust it to come through for us.
Master magicians are able to just drop an obsessive concern because they have their true feelings so finely tuned that they can switch them off and on at will. They are not as wrapped up in their desires and feelings as are average people. They don’t have such an ego stake (success / glory versus failure / shame) in the outcome of anything, so they can throw their attention completely behind a desire, and just as completely release it. Average people can’t do this – they cling, and cling, and cling to their desires and thought forms. They don’t know how to let go. They don’t have the discipline to be able to just drop something without looking back. So what average people have to do is to trick themselves: after setting up an intent through obsessive concern, they should then arbitrarily choose some other area of their lives to become obsessively concerned about, and shift all their intense, obsessive desire to this other area.
What follows are merely suggestions and examples. You must adapt the model to your own taste, to create spells that are meaningful to you, personally. The important thing is to imagine your desire coming true in the now moment. This means imagining yourself to be in the midst of your desire coming true, rather than being a detached observer (as you do in normal fantasizing and daydreaming). For example, in casting a love spell you must imagine yourself to be looking the other person directly in the eye and talking sincerely to them, and listening to what they have to say, rather than viewing them from a distance (as you do in romantic or sexual fantasies).
As you cast the spell, imagine in your mind’s eye your desire coming true right now, and let yourself feel all the joy you would feel if that were indeed the case. In other words, Creative Visualization is a matter of hypnotizing oneself (if only momentarily) into believing that your desires are already true. This is how we reach out to the probable realities in which we realize our desires: by breaking the hypnotic spell of our obsessive moods of unhappiness; by giving hope a little elbow room in there, so it can nudge its way through the gloom of our customary self-pity. Hope is the fuel that propels desire lines forward. This means faith not in ultimate success, but in ultimate self-worth. In the end you have to abide by the dictates of power. You win a few; you lose a few; that’s the way it goes.
(continued … )