Sometimes you don’t think magic is all that powerful. You think you’ll only get one animate broom, if that. And then suddenly you have three million animate brooms and you are drowning in the waters of your own confusion and ignorance and feeling like Mickey Mouse in an animated short. 

(Amusingly, the old tale of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was also recounted in Compendium Maleficarum. Witch hunting manuals have so much accidental wisdom in them.)

I haven’t made a long text post in awhile. This is because my life has been crazy– particularly my magical/spiritual/religious life. I’ve wanted to share about it, but have been too raw, and haven’t known where to start. 

So I’ll start here, with an important lesson I’ve learned. 

If you want to dabble in magic but have a healthy skepticism about whether this is all “real,” that’s fine. That was me for a long time. But there are dangers to this attitude, and I am here to give you a warning about it. 

True skepticism is open-mindedness. Think about how good science is actually done: you have a hypothesis, but you don’t wanna be too married to it because it will skew your interpretation of results. And if your hypothesis is wrong, you have to be ready to throw it out. 

If your hypothesis is “magic isn’t real,” magical experiments may prove you wrong. You ready for that? 

I’ve done some things not truly expecting them to work, or not expecting them to work very well, because I still felt foolish and thought I was probably kidding myself about any of this stuff being real. 

The problem with that is… what if it works? 

Are you ready for it to fucking work? 

If you go into a spell or ritual with too much skepticism, that means you may not be mentally and emotionally prepared for it to have real, powerful consequences. Even sending out a prayer that you don’t truly expect to be answered can have this effect.

And if you’re too cynical about results, you likely haven’t thought through all the potential repercussions, and that can be devastating. 

For example, I prayed for Lucifer to destroy all of my illusions. Yep, all of them. I’m an idiot. 

Just a couple weeks later I have quit a job I loved, and broken up with my boyfriend who I also love to pieces, because I became incapable of ignoring the ways in which those lovely things in my life weren’t healthy for me anymore. How much more in my life is based on beloved illusions? I may be about to find out, even though I feel like I’ve already lost pretty much everything I have. 

Are you ready for something like that?

Related, I did that Black Baptism in May. I did it in the spirit of occult experimentation, basically customizing a supposed Satanic Witch Initiation I found in Compendium Malleficarum. I had no idea if there was anything to it, given that there was a good chance it was just based on false confessions extracted under torture. So I decided to jump on that grenade– try it, and see if it worked. 

I still admire that reckless, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants spirit of experimentation that I had going into the ritual, and I don’t regret self-initiating and giving oath to Satan. However…

…did you know that initiation involves spiritual death? 

Yeah, spiritual death. Hard to describe if you have never been through it. Feels about as painful as it sounds. Imagine shedding parts of your identity that don’t serve you anymore like so much dry skin. Imagine suddenly becoming a completely different person, and realizing you need completely different things than you thought. 

Then imagine how painful that process can be for all the people around you. 

If your identity died and you were reborn as something new, would your old life be set up for that new person? Chances are, you just can’t know the answer to that until it happens. We don’t get to pick what we are reborn as. 

If I sound naive, chaotic and disorganized, it’s because I honestly am. I’ve been at this for a couple of years and have done a lot of reading, but I am not and never have been part of any structured magical tradition. The Devil is my initiator and he doesn’t always play nice. He also knows the only way I tend to learn is “the hard way.” I signed up to be repeatedly astrally gut-punched by Lucifer, and I knew he didn’t pull his punches, but intellectually knowing that and actually finding out how hard Satan can hit you are different things. 

So I am begging you, dear skeptics and cynics who like to do magic to see if it will work (but kinda don’t expect it to):

Be ready for it to go either way. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe ALL THE THINGS WILL HAPPEN. You’ve got to be prepared. 

And uh, please don’t try my Black Baptism ritual, or any other initiation rite, until you’re sure you’re ready. It might change your life. It might change you. And it won’t necessarily start changing you right away, or change you in the ways you expect. When I did the ritual itself, I had a lot of powerful emotions, but I didn’t have any flashy visions, or hear the voice of Satan, or feel him touch me to leave a Devil’s mark. I thought maybe it had been nice and personally cathartic, but not magically effective. I was wrong. The Devil’s Mark is on me now, and I am still figuring out what that means. 

I love you all. Hail Lucifer and also Thanks Lucifer, You Absolute Motherfucker.