by Rev. Michael J Dangler, originally published on his Patreon

I’m finally breaking into the “personal experience” part of Magic for Priests, and I’m actually really excited!

Part of me wonders why it took so long to get to personal practice, and of course, part of me knows many of the answers to that. But, we’re here now, so I’m happy to move on it, and I actually got to update an answer to one of my previous submissions!

You can find my original answer to this question on my website, if you want to read it!

I also ended up creating a few resources as well for this question; mostly, they’re just guides to help you figure out how to get started on the question, so that a student can dig in a bit and feel like they have enough information to at least start to interrogate their notions and work. I created a strategy guide for each of the four strategies I suggested. Each is a 1-pager that just guides you to jot down a few ideas about your own practice, and what appeals to you. You can also find the basic reference materials on my Google Drive, too.

I’m really excited to work on the next few questions, too. I have ideas about how to answer them, and I can’t wait to see how they go. Hopefully, you’ll see those soon, too!

In this session, we’re going to dive into personal practice; up until now, it’s all been about historical magicians and cultural traditions, and I’m excited for the shift. This video answers Question 6 of Magic for Priests in the ADF Clergy Training Program, as well as Question 7 in Initiate Magical Practice 1 in the Initiate Program and Question 2 in Magical Practice 1 in the Magician’s Guild Study Program, as it stands at this recording. The question prompt is:

Discuss the relative place and methodologies of magic within your personal religious/spiritual practice. (minimum 100 words)

What does the question mean?

So today we’re diving into your personal practice, examining how you do magic, and how it connects with your spiritual practice.

So, what’s the question asking?

This question is, at its most basic, “When, why and how do you use magic in your spiritual life?” That means there aren’t any wrong answers, because this is about you and how you’ve built, and how you see, the relationship between magic and spiritual work.

Strategies for Answering This Question

Because this question is so specific to your personal practice, we’re going to look at some basic strategies for answering it that might help you organize your thoughts. And because it’s about personal practice, and so heavily reliant on your interpretations of the work, we recognize that there are a lot of paths to travel to get here. It’s possible that you might like to try out several of these strategies, or maybe only one might work for you. It’s possible that none will, but I hope that’s not the case. But once we’ve covered the basic strategies, I’ll take you through my own answer to the question.

If you’re watching this on my Patreon page, or this video has made it to the ADF pages as part of a study guide, there should be a resource linked to help you with each strategy.

Strategy 1: Outlining the 5 W’s (and How)

You remember our first exercise from grade school; I think I did it first in third grade. When describing something, ask the Five W’s: Who, What, When, Where, and Why. I think it was in fifth or sixth grade that we added “How” to the list. Anyway, the process of thinking about these “Five W’s and an H” gets us to all the information we need to answer the question as it’s written, probably even with enough words to beat the word count.

So, if you want to try out this strategy, sit down and think about these “Five W’s” and how you can apply them to your practice. With whom do you do magic? What sort do you do? When do you do it? Where do you practice? Why do you do magic in those situations? And, of course, how do you do it?

These can be simple sentences, or they can be really in depth. Once you’ve jotted them down, go through your notes and try and come up with a cohesive story about your process.

Strategy 2: Talk To Someone About It!

There is nothing that can speed you down the path of organizing your thoughts as quickly as trying to work out how to explain your process to someone else. This is, after all, one of the main benefits of working on the Druids In Cars, Going to Festivals podcast, where I learn all sorts of interesting things about my own work while speaking to Rev. Avende on long drives. But to keep you from floundering around too much, I recommend you start with a little organizational document so you can at least have a starting point. You should have a section to help you organize your practice into words, a section for questions you want to ask the other person, and a section for notes about the conversation you can apply to the answer you eventually submit.

Then, sit down and chat about your magical practice! Talk about things you’ve done, the types of experiences you’ve had, and where you expect to go with it. If you want to record it on your phone so you can go back and listen to it, ask your conversation partner if that’s okay; of course, also feel free to offer the recording to them if they’re going to go through the same program.

Then, listen to it, and create your coherent story to answer the question.

Strategy 3: Break It Down

If you’re not deep into practice yet, it might help to break things down before you answer the question. Here, we’re going to think about the question in two parts: methodologies of magic, and how you can (or think you might) apply them. We’ve talked a lot about magical traditions, symbols, and even specific workings in the last few discussions, particularly in our answer to Question 5 of Magic for Priests 1, and it’s worth looking through the notes for that question.

What appeals to you about those magical practices? Are there aspects you dislike, that you’ve modified? If you don’t currently have a magical practice, you can spend a lot of time thinking about how these were practiced, and their applications in the modern world.

Now, think about your own practice and how it relates to these ancient practices. Do you do any work that matches these modalities? Have you found a unique way to apply one or two of them? Have you created something different, but based on those experiences? How do you see them in your work?

Your aim here is to explain the place of these methodologies in your work, to give a window into the process.

Strategy 4: Thinking Broadly About Your Style

While breaking it down is a great place to start if you’re new to practicing magic, if you have no deep experience at all with something you’d consider magic, think broadly about your style and preferences. Do you like working alone, or with others? Do you prefer structured, or unstructured magic? Do you do think about magic as a way to satisfy your curiosity, or your needs? Whose style of magic, whether a real or fictional person, do you think you’d like to model your style on? If you’ve had a successful magical working that you really liked, focus on that for a moment: if you describe a real experience, it can greatly deepen the context about what works.

Then, review your notes and create a workable description of your style and practice.

How I’d answer This Question

After we’ve organized a bit, it’s time for us to think about how we’d actually answer it. This question only requires 100 words, so hopefully the strategies provided in this video will help you achieve that word count with no issue.

I went back to look at my original answer to this question, written in 2006 (geez, it’s been 15 years as of this recording). At that time, I was primarily using magic to improve my ritual skills and to satisfy curiosity. You can read that answer in a link in the video description, or here.

Today, if I were going to answer the question, it would be something more like this:

As my magical practice has developed over the years, it’s taken two tracks: one is primarily thaumaturgic, and one theurgic, and they exist in very different places in my practice.

The theurgic work is what I consider my primary work: this work is primarily confined to an ADF Core Order of Ritual approach, and draws on ancient modalities like trance induction, praise of various spirits, and deep personal relationships with those spirits to draw out the power of the work.

The thaumaturgic approach pulls from the Initiatory Current in ADF, and from my work as co-owner of a local spiritual supply store. Through these paths, I connect with people of all walks of life and belief structures, for whom a personal spiritual connection is not always an appropriate vehicle to access cosmos-altering, life-improving work. It relies most often on ancient sources that are modified to create an experience that is accessible, meeting people where they are, and doing the most good I can.

Conclusion

That’s about 160 words, so well over the minimum, and I feel like there’s so much more I could say.

It’s really important for us to remember that this question doesn’t have a right or wrong answer, and it’s really a “point in time” sort of answer: it shows what you’re doing, today, with the tools you have. Just like my answer has changed in 15 years, yours likely will, too. Don’t get stuck on the idea that you’re not doing enough today. Just answer as honestly as you can about what you actually do, and you’ll do fine.

Thanks!