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"Steal This Book of Shadows"
ver 2.0
by
Azzerac
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Advice & Mindsets:
Insights & Experience
(Brought To You By,...)
In this appendix-styled sub-book we'll be addressing all of the little things, journal-styled, that would be covered if this could be a sit-down apprenticeship in magic.
There are many twists, turns, and cul-de-sacs to the human mind. There are ways in which you function that are difficult, if not impossible to quantify on a flow-chart or index. When you add to that formula the interactions with other minds, you square the difficulty, ...and then square it again. (It becomes difficult to know your own mind, in this landscape, let alone your own thoughts from others, but we'll cover this in just this section).
When you practice magic, you'll discover that, like with all applied skills, there are facet's of practice that fall outside the range of instruction. Like working at your career, there is "procedure", but everyone knows that the procedure is based upon average (if not Lowest) common denominators. You are only trained to deal with the most likely thing to happen in a given set of situations.
It never works out that way.
That's why most professions & businesses develop a "Q-Manual": a book of guidelines that fall outside of training. This book advises on how to deal with the aberrant problems that can arise when subjected to the worst monsters out there: Other People.
If it helps, think of this as this magician's "Q-Manual".
Spell-Casting: Why would one even bother?
I spend an awful lot of time talking about quick-casting, and 'no-time-to-cast' attitudes toward magical proficiency. Why, then, when I seem to be discussing "Psionics", am I pushing spell-casting? You'd think it antithetical to the end goal of this text, and my own personal practice.
Well, if I haven't mentioned it already, spell-casting is an important step to magical development.
Spell-casting is kind of like being in love. No-one can tell you what it's like. You simply know it when you're there.
The various tools, chants, mood-elements, components, and more help you exercise the 'head-space'. These things, these rituals help you "know when you're there". The repetition of a process helps you gain familiarity with related & subsequent internal state that is the actual spell. All of the poetry, do-dads, and incense help you find, within yourself, how that spell feels and how directing that energy happens.
You can't do it on the fly until you can do it slowly, step-by-step. In magic, that means taking it slow, and actually performing spells.
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