Uses promptos facit

Stonehenge by Simon Wakefield - it's funny because this picture was actually taken on the 27th of December 2008.

Practice makes perfect

On the eve of the summer solstice (yesterday), I started thinking about the importance of regular practice in magical workings.  Magic, like writing or music or any other skill, is learned.  You may have an aptitude for it, but if you don't nurture that talent you won't get very far with it.  The benefits of creating and sticking with a regular schedule of ritual and workings are subtle yet manifold.  The more you work at something the easier it becomes for you, you know?

I know that when I stick to regular practice I feel calmer, more grounded, and yet more open and in touch with the various gods and spirits with whom I work.  Unfortunately, I'm terrible at keeping with a regular schedule at anything in my life.  Life, it seems, likes to get in my way, and I can always find an excuse to not do something even if it's something that I really want to do.  I'm working on breaking that habit, but, like with anything, it takes time and practice.  And I frustrate so easily.

See, I have a tendency to work manically—in fits and starts.  I'll spend days fretting over one or another: researching a god, or learning the magical, medicinal, and culinary uses of an herb, or finding, copying, and/or writing poems and prayers.  Then, I'll lose focus, and spend weeks doing nothing but vegging out with Netflix until I feel so guilty for doing so that I jump back into a manic state of work.  And everything is done so randomly and in such a slipshod fashion that I get no benefit from it.  I learn nothing.  I lose focus because I never really had it to begin with.

I decided a while back—though those who know have been saying this for years (I just didn't listen)—to look at my magical and religious practices like I did school.  I was brilliant at school.  Ruthlessly organized, relentless in my studies, and (once I figured out my major) frighteningly focused.  Since I finished my Master's degree, I've been all at ends.  For a while it was like I lost my purpose.  The sad fact that people with my degree now have an average wait of 10 years before landing a full time job in our field just made it worse.  In fact, even now the thing I most regret about my life is that I got a Master's: I don't believe that I will ever work full time in my field, and will leave it (and my crappy part time/no benefits job) as soon as I am able.  That's not the point, though.  That's not the lesson.*

The point is: what I need, what I believe everyone needs–especially magic workers–is that focus I learned in my years at university.

Regular practice.  Regular studies.  Regular worship.  It helps.  Really and truly, it does.  When I work on a schedule and not at my own whim, I am much calmer and everything in my life benefits.  The slow and incremental learning of anything, helps not only to build a foundation for more advanced skills, but also in retention.  To continue with my college analogy, it's much easier and mor effective to study all semester than to desperately cram before the final.  My magical practice has, in past years, been that desperate cram session resulting in wonky spells that may or may not work.  To fix this I've slowly been adding routine into my practice, and cutting out the mania.

Lately I've been needing more help with that.  Last October I quit one of my two part time jobs** and now I have way more time on my hands.  Which, for me, means more time to pursue my own interests/studies, and more time to dick around and forget about those interests/studies.  To remedy this, I recently bought a weekly planner–just like I had in uni–to help me plan out (and stick to) a more complicated schedule than I was expecting.  Oh, and this planner is a magical thing!  Room for notes and so much more.  And it's much harder to ignore a book than my phone.  It'll help me find and maintain a workable schedule for everything I want to do: magic, language, work, search for work, write, worship, and more!

As I am now, I've been able to maintain (for the most part) weekly offerings to my gods, ancestors, and spirits as per my arrangement with them.  I haven't kept up with my language studies, but expect that to change with focus.  As will my magical studies, since I plan to treat them like actual classes rather than the ad libitum episodes that they are now.  All this will help me to deepen my spiritual and magical practices, and help me gain a greater proficiency and knowledge of the things.  I encourage everyone looking to deepen and enrich their own practices to do so as well.

Happy solstice everyone!  And how cool is it that the full moon and the solstice fall on the same day this year?

*That's a minor rant about my utter disappointment and the waste of about $30K that I couldn't and still can't afford.

**In the hopes that I would soon find a full time position somewhere.  Besides that it was a SUPER crappy job.  Management treated the part time employees poorly, and the HR person constantly talked to me like I was a mentally handicapped child rather than a full grown woman in her 30s.  Sorry, another rant.