Hearth & Horn

And answering that Phil Hine post, as I can't seem to post a comment there:

What does “working” or “not working” constitute in relation to a particular practice? Is it just about “feeling good”? Is something more involved? What (if any) are the criteria used to assess how much a particular practice is “working”

I think, for me, theism has formed a really important part of my journey - not "what works" but "what do I actually believe", which is an additional axis. Consequently, a lot of my early experimentation in easily accessible was derailed by my desire to believe in what I was doing and agree with the cosmological map underpinning it. For example, I am absolutely not invoking angels (or universal-cosmic-energies-masquerading-as-angels) in my living room - and that continued to be true *even after* I experimented with ceremonial magic and found it pleasurable and effective. A cosmological framework which has been designed around Abrahamic monotheism, or a Wiccan fertility binary, can't ever truly be repurposed to a new worldview - at least, not in ways that satisfied me.

So these things I tried, even when they felt good, even when they had a fun aesthetic, or had tangible results - didn't fit this criteria (and it's taken me a long time to figure out that this is what my criteria was). I feel like I'm probably matured into my permanent practice now (I'm in my 30s), and by a lot of criteria it would be seen as "failing" - I don't do a lot of practical magic, and a lot of my daily work is very hearth-craft and minimally ritualistic; I have the capacity to be a technical magician, but not the interest - but it's satisfying a holistic need, a sense of rightness in the universe - and it turns out, to me, that is what was important.

And ultimately, "ceremonial angel magic works - but I don't believe in it" was not as satisfying as "I know my faith is the one true religion, I believe it in the way I believe in mountains - as something real enough to touch, real enough not to question - but no, I can't do effective results magic, I can't make it 'work' " was the answer for me. As frustrating as this will be to people of a more "scientific method" bent, who will argue that surely the magic that 'works' is the magic that is 'real'. But I guess I have a sort of anti-capitalist aesthetic resistance to this, that the purpose of magic is to be put-to-use and to "produce" improvement and advancement and success; instead of a more sensory, nebulous thing that exists for its own pleasure and its own secrets. Rather like a cow or a landscape does not exist for the profit you can extract by it or the work you can do with it or the achievements you can win through it.