All the textbooks of practical magic, without exception, say that when working magic you must attain a point where the desire has left you. The 'itch' you are working on has to leave you completely, in other words, to manifest on the material plane, where you want it. The theory is that if you keep thinking about the matter, or chewing it over in any way, the spell comes back to you and won't manifest.
I have always found this incredibly difficult, because I tend to chew things over and find it very difficult just to leave things. For this reason I have always tended towards magics where you can keep coming back and scratching the itch until it does actually leave you. I would not dispute the need for the desire to leave you, just need to make sure it actually does go.
Personally I think I just sometimes need to keep working on things until it goes. You know when it's left you because it just doesn't bother you any more (bearing in mind that the chief target of magic is always the magician himself, really). If you will pardon my unsubtle way of putting it, it can feel like a cat does when they've used the litter tray and run round the house because they feel much lighter.
These thoughts are occasioned by a matter leaving me today, although it's been evident that things have been moving for some time. Things have seemed to come to a head the past couple of weeks and after events today I am sitting here surprised that I really don't care about it any more. This is how I know that what I want is going to happen.
Of course since someone with an actual legal responsibility for this situation has asked me to let them posted on what is happening on the day I have ceased to care about it, I'm still going to have to do that. But I think that's more along the lines of acting in accord with the spell. The person, who is the hopeless building manager of the building I live in, should have been more interesting in this situation all along, and the fact he has now taken an interest is what shows me something will happen.
I'm sure he wouldn't like me to happen to him!
Like you, I find "ritualising it out" very difficult, too. Although it is helped by having a terrible attention span and too many things to do.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure your building-related situation will resolve itself to your satisfaction soon. After all, your building manager does know you, doesn't he?
P.S. Lovely graveyard.
And can I say how impressed I am that neither of us has mentioned ejaculation? The graveyard is Warstone Lane although my actual favourite is Key Hill and I have family buried there because we were Nonconformists.
DeleteCatharsis.
ReplyDeleteI too love the graveyard picture. Last month I drove through my childhood neighborhood during a time of intense stress looking for, I don't know, the comfort of familiarity perhaps? I felt nothing. Then I felt like I should be sad for feel nothing. I no longer belong there, and I don't know when I learned to let it go.
I think it's possible places, people and situations have a time when they're right and so many people don't get that that time passes.
DeleteApologies for taking so long to ok this comment, but Blogger elected not to tell me about it.
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