- Published on
Magic as the Art of Living
- Authors
- Name
- Lorselq
- @lorselq
Magic is Beautiful
Karma is woefully misunderstood, especially in how it pertains to magic, and I’d like to share my understanding that comes from opening commentary in the Bhagavad Gita. Let’s be clear, though: I’m neither hindu nor a yogi, and I am very open to correction—yet this concept is so important, even apart from religion and mysticism, that I want to give a more effective definition while calling the concept by its name: karma.
Karma is not the universe rewarding good or punishing bad; karma is recognizing that causal relations run so deep that when we affect some external part of existence, we are simultaneously affecting ourselves. Whether you help, hurt, or ignore people, you are transformed by your actions.
From a meme: “The reason almost every girl goes through a witch phase is because it’s the one female archetype where the woman isn’t given power by a man.” Women have felt trapped for more generations than I can count—so to have power of their own, beholden to no one, is decidedly appealing. To have power means you can change your circumstances, and you can stop being trapped. There are two ways to change your circumstances: by changing the world around you and by changing yourself. Ironically, doing one always results in the other.
But the effects are not haphazard; like draws out like, and you become more of what you do.
If the occult is approached in earnest, one's path is of their own design based on what resonates with them. This path contains our ideals, which means that practicing the occult transforms us into the truest expression of ourselves.
In a sense, a magical path is an act of artistic creation where we transform our inner and outer worlds to match our highest aesthetic ideals. Witchcraft is sometimes called "the craft", and while calling it such is probably for different reasons than what I said here, let me ask a question to both practitioners and non-practitioners alike:
What Beauty are you creating?