by Mekel Haunsby

Having studied various religious rituals, from voodo to the Christian wedding ceromony I think I have reached a workable conclusion regarding the workability of a religious or mystic rituals.

These are my theories in summation:

For a spell to work, at least one of the involved have to believe its workability; the more the agreement there is upon its workability, the more it will work.

A spell is a process whereby the outcome is named and specified rather precisely.

Explanation: If you ever read one of these stories in which people are granted three wishes without limitation, you will notice that they ALWAYS get in trouble…. Why? Because their wish was NOT thoroughly thought through. So when the wish is granted, it becomes more of a problem than a solution.

Let’s say an Indian medicine man is performing a raindance, he knows exactly what he wants: He does not want all plants to have enough water (in which case they would engulf our planet completely ). He wants something very specific, and in performing the ritual taught to him by his ancestors he performs a very controlled form of magic. He proceeds through a coordinated and codified sequence of actions and thought patterns leading to a specific result.

A good magic formula, is like a food recipe: if you do it right, you end up with that superb cake. Not a burned piece of charcoal.

What basically brings the magic around is the person doing it, NOT the recipe. The recipe is just a direction; no food recipe ever made any food, but if you perform it YOU get a nice cake.

A person does not basically want to cause bad things so he limits his/hers own power to almost nothing; a magic ritual allows that power to flow freely. Those who use magic for evil purposes will eventually weaken in their own attempt to stop themselves.

The ONLY way to be a magician, and continue to be one, is to only perform magic for the greater good. Go and bring magic to the world!