I want to share with you a secret about magick: I believe we are all magicians.

All of us are active witches, warlocks, wizards, sorcerers, and alchemists. I’m not kidding in the least. If “magic” is really just a word we use for unexplainable forces and phenomena (everything, after all, seems like magic until science finds an explanation), then magicians are just people who explore the unexplainable.

We’re learning so much about how our thoughts impact our emotions, physical experience, and our behavior (and therefore, even the outcomes of our lives), and I’ve been exploring that long enough to have pretty concrete empirical evidence that we can act as magicians, manifesting outcomes in and around ourselves by exerting a certain kind of energy (specific thoughts).

Still not kidding. I’ve become so conscious of my own thoughts and how they impact my wellbeing and the outcome of my goals that I’ve even become even a little paranoid about the power I have. Which leads me to one conclusion:

I’m finally a real witch.

I make things happen with my focused thoughts alone. Isn’t that exactly what we refer to as “magic”?

The great thing about this is that it means ANYONE can be a magician, and you can also have a positive impact on your life pretty much immediately.

How does one go about becoming a magician, capable of transforming their mood, the outcome of their day, their relationships, or their life path?

It all starts with tuning into your thoughts – the scripts and stories and babble constantly running through your head. If you haven’t practiced tuning in before, its going to take a minute.

For me I find there are two or three levels of thought. The first is narrative – where you’re literally thinking out loud in your head, about the weather or your task list or whether Jake will be on time for band practice tonight.

The second level is deeper, less conscious – like when you feel bad that your boss called you out for not meeting deadlines but you haven’t actually had the thought, “I’m feeling ashamed because I’m making this mean I’m bad at my job.”

The third level is all primitive brain. These are trigger moments (amygdala hijackings!), when you go from fine to enraged or offended in an instant and it takes 20 minutes to calm down and realize what just happened.

When you start to tune in, you’ll only really have access to the first level, and that’s fine, frankly its all you need to make a huge dent. But as you continue your journey of listening, and developing emotional awareness and vocabulary, you’ll gain access to deeper levels and will develop more and more self control and emotional regulation. Which is the key to your universe. The more power you have over your own thoughts, feelings and actions, the more control you will have to make your inner and outer worlds match your ideal.

Becoming A Magician

Now that I’ve given you a rundown on the concept, here are some exercises you can do to practice self awareness and start becoming the alchemist of your own body and life:

1. Practice emotional meditation. Check in and ask, “how am I feeling right now?” Begin to notice how it feels to have different emotions.
2. Tune into your own narrative. Anytime you’re feeling crappy – sad, lonely, frustrated, hurt, hopeless, or angry – check in and ask, “what thoughts have I been thinking about myself, others, or my situation?” Begin to notice how much power your thoughts have over your experience.
3. Experiment with mood magick. This is the art of taking a bad mood and flipping it around. You can make a dent in a number of ways (including listening to yourself, gently letting the feelings be there, journaling about your thoughts, smiling or laughing, watching a comedy, thinking positive thoughts instead, etc.)
4. Experiment with manifestation magick. Try this with any old day, or perhaps a day you expect to be a bad one (this takes more time and effort, but you can do it!) Start telling yourself that today or tonight is going to be awesome. Be specific, and think as though you were telling a friend after the fact. I tend to go for narratives like, “holy crap! I opened myself up this morning and today turned out to be SO much more amazing than I could have expected! So many awesome things happened!” Visualize specific outcomes. And FEEL how good it feels.
5. Experiment with identity magick. This is essentially secret (or not-so-secret) roleplay. I wrote about how to become an elven space goddess in another post, but you could go with anything – your favourite vampire, a spy (literally), an action hero, or your favourite celebrity.

I’ll be writing more detailed posts about each of these practices very soon, but for now, I’d love to hear about your experiments and how they go!

emotional control magick manifestation self awareness