The journey of life from cradle to grave is already embedded with several difficulties and problems you will face as an individual. Start to practice magick and you up the ante of trials and tribulations (not to mention the blessings and wonder). Become a magician and you can add walking on a double edged sword and backflips on the tip of a pin to the experience section of your resume. Still interested? Read on.

So what does personal problems and spiritual danger have to do with magick? A lot. First, a large majority of individuals are attracted to magick to solve their personal problems. Seeking money, love, revenge and power are classical reasons people start to dabble in the craft. It might be what lures you into the initial outer chamber. Magick seems to provide a methodology to overcome one’s shortcomings, however they appear in one’s life.

Magick, however, can be a highly intricate boobytrap and puzzle. This is where the spiritual danger can come in. Metaphorically speaking, you can cut your arm and it gets infected so badly you have to amputate it. Spiritual dangers could be entering into a regressive soul contract, tethering yourself to bad juju, getting caught up in vampiric egregores, workings that stifles the voice of your holy daimon, magickal acts that are against the conscience of yourself or others, etc. Alternatively, you can unlock one mechanism and witness the most soul-stirring miracles, blessings & splendor rain upon you.

On the path of magick, each new door and turn brings forth something new within. It could be new skill sets, techniques, cultivated inner development, deciphering of signs, maturity, applied philosophy or proper understanding, for example, to help you correctly proceed. You notice this if you’re paying attention. Some states of magickal development might require of you assembling and some might require simply abiding. Seasons might give you a short and smooth runway or a long and jagged runway. More so, the landscape can constantly morph and allude one like a mirage in the desert if they aren’t discerning. It’s a trial and error rodeo and your path is uniquely tailored for you. You’ll discover kin passing through similar hallways, but each person has their distinctly unique path before them.

When you decide to seriously practice magick, it’s akin to having a tag put on you by the powers that be. You are assessed at your current level of inner development and spiritual maturity. You’re tested and put on moderate pace, accelerated or put on pause according to several in-depth factors. You could be put in a pen with dancing pigs wearing enchanted masks as a test. If you get drunk in the gaiety with the pigs, enjoy the mud bath. That’s where you’re staying until you get bitten, fall asleep or the pigs disappear in a phantom mist. Your karmic list of debits and credits might be brought up for review, and you need to work through heavy karmic debts that would ultimately hold you back before you have the ability to truly proceed. Alternatively, you might have several factors in your present life that prevent you from proceeding, be it people regressively influencing you, not having your life together, undeveloped aspects of yourself that need to be refined to be able to operate at the next level, your belief system, etc. Sometimes you may have to address those things before you can be in a position to establish preliminary and higher level foundations for success. Often, it is simply a matter of being a hard lump of clay that requires a lot of handling, shaping and firing, like pottery, to bring forth the potential luminosity and polish.

As magick involves consciously working with energetic processes (i.e. transmuting something from a mineral or vegetative state upwards); collected pools of energy (i.e. deities, astral/mental energy, collective unconscious, etc.); and metaphysical frameworks (chakras, hierarchies of beings, etc.), both within and without, experiencing turbulence is unavoidable. It’s part of the job description and actually priceless for your overall training. What you need to do is be savvy enough to not have the turbulence take you out, even if you’re down for two counts.

To open your higher centers and hold higher octaves of energy, your vessels need to be more or less harmonized, depending on the level of refinement/degree of energy you are working with or embodying. Then as one builds experience, you can develop sophisticated means for addressing or solving personal problems, or navigating any aspect of life really, via magick. Whereas initially approaching magick may have been due to some immature, flimsy motive, as one develops their magicianship their ability to consciously engage with and touch any and all aspects of life, including personal problems and navigating spiritual dangers, eventually becomes developed, heightened and refined.

Initiation is activation. Spiritual fire being applied to refine your inner materials will activate personal problems or bring up hang ups regardless. It’s part of the process. Despite life already doing this by nature, by introducing an influx of energies through magick you are in a predicament the average Joe is not. You have opened yourself up to have a direct interaction, communication and handling of these things. You’re agreeing to actively engage with this process. Perceive any knots or issues that come to the surface with a problem-solving mindset. The solution may require action or surrender. Quick movements or slow unraveling. One approach or another. Your ability to assess several factors and correctly work with any situation as a mature magician comes with time. Resourcefulness and being nimble will allow your tires to travel great distances.

It takes several layers of initiation to work through the initial outer trappings of personal problems and spiritual dangers. Establishing and maintaining inner harmony greatly curtails possible derailing. Should you dare to toe the line, ultimately stay within your personal ethics, follow your conscience/intuition, and observe rules of moral behavior to avoid possible pitfalls. Knowing yourself, your motives, reasonings and holistic considerations upon each rock on a steep, treacherous pass is a secret ingredient to spontaneously levitate above crumbling rocks. One key is to harness the purity and sincerity in your intentions with this work. What tools and assets you develop as you work through trial after trial, and just how you apply them, determines what doors open and the places you set up camp for a while on the ultimate journey towards a greater, unspeakable secret garden.