Forest Wizard

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  • The Word

    The Word

    In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

    John 1:1

    For a long, long time, my whole life, maybe, I’ve believed that magic requires some kind of secret magic words; exactly like in the movies. All I need to do to get the results I want is to find the right magic words to use.

    I followed a magician several years ago who taught that complicated rituals always work, but people don’t want to do the hard stuff so they don’t do it.

    As time has gone on, I’ve realized that this is obviously not a helpful way to experience existence. In part because it plays into this idea that if you just follow the directions exactly, you’ll do magic. It’s easy to think of magic like baking; you can’t just throw whatever you want into the oven and expect to pull out a load of sourdough.

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  • a new understanding of Temperance

    a new understanding of Temperance

    Temperance is a card that has followed me around my whole life. It’s the card that has come up for me in personal card pulls more than any other, by far. It feels like it’s connected to something very deep inside me.

    So, imagine my frustration when I am unable to figure out the message of the card, again and again. The meaning alluded me completely.

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  • Depression, Magic, and Shifting Reality

    Depression, Magic, and Shifting Reality

    A fairly major part of occultism is the idea that you can shift reality to suit your needs. How this works depends on the tradition or system you subscribe to, but essentially the idea is that you can use your mental powers to create real, physical change around you.

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  • Pentacles – Within and Without

    Pentacles – Within and Without

    The minor arcana has four suits, and each suit, very broadly, represents a different facet of our lived experience.

    • Cups: Emotions/Love (water)
    • Swords: Ideas/Thoughts (air)
    • Wands: Feeling/Judgement (fire)
    • Pentacles: Sensation/Materialism (earth)

    Because of that last bullet point, pentacles are often associated with money.

    The reason for this post, however, is to look into a strange detail that exists throughout the entire tarot deck.

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  • Silence

    Silence

    Last week I was depressed. Not the usual all-the-time low-grade depression that’s been normal for me since childhood, but instead something hard and intense and ruthless.

    It came out of nowhere and instantly took me down into the depths of sadness and despair. I had entered a new, unfamiliar reality where every person despised me and I was a horrible burden to anyone I locked eyes with.

    I’ve been there before, but I hate it. When I’m in it, it feels so real. Much more real than even this moment now. Like a veil has been lifted and I can now see actuality.

    I can’t, of course, but that’s what it feels like.

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  • The Fool

    The Fool

    For the uninitiated, a tarot deck contains 78 cards that are used for divinatory purposes. These cards are split into two main sections: the major and the minor arcanas. The major arcana consists of 22 named images, starting with 0 – The Fool, and ending with 21 – The World. It’s in the major arcana that we find notable cards such as Death and The Lovers.

    The minor arcana, on the other hand,consists of four suits, each numbered ace-10 and followed by four court cards.

    Eliphas Levi said that if you were locked in solitary confinement and the only book you had access to was a deck of tarot cards, you could, eventually, learn everything there was to know. Tarot, according to Levi, is a book of universal symbols that are intended to convey universal laws.

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