Our ‘Guest-Feature’ series continues with another great essay from active magician Taylor Ellwood. If you want to learn more about Taylor and his great writings, you can check the links at the bottom of this page, or listen to Episode 13 of the show in which he did a great interview with us…

The Power of Being Open in Magic

In one of my recent articles, I discussed the path of least resistance and how it can work within a magical model. In this article, I expand on how this paradigm works by examining how being open can simplify both your relationships with other people and with magic itself.

One of my philosophies when it comes to interactions with people and interactions with magic is fairly similar and based on understanding that the less complicated a situation is, the easier it is to navigate the situation. This isn’t to say that magic and people aren’t complicated. They can both be very complicated, but a situation doesn’t have to be complicated. Ideally if you remove the complicated factors that you have control of in a given situation, it consequently sets a person at ease, or in the case of magic, makes it much easier to manifest.

I realized some time ago that the best approach with people is to simply put all your cards on the table and show your hand. No subtlety, no hidden agenda…just lay it all out and let the other person do the interpretation as s/he wishes. Every time I approached a situation where I didn’t do this, where I didn’t just lay my cards out, it always complicated matters, because even though I might have no hidden agenda, the fact that everything wasn’t on the table aroused suspicion and played on the worst fears those people entertained about me. Suddenly I was a master manipulator and arch villain. Well perhaps not so melodramatic, but if people didn’t feel they could trust me, they weren’t going to do business or magic with me.

By choosing to play my hand, show all the cards, and be transparent, it simplified any situation I was in. On the one hand it could be argued that the other people had control of the situation by simply knowing everything I had in my hand. And yet in that openness I find comfort, because everything on my end is available for all to see. Sure it can be interpreted and likely will be interpreted through the biases and filters people have, yet nonetheless, in that openness lies freedom. It becomes an accepted reality and whether anything is done with that reality or not, the situation is less complicated. The person or people I’m dealing with know what’s going on and it’s up to them to make a choice in regards to my being open. I’ve chosen to be open with my agenda, show them all the cards, and now they must choose to do something about it, even if that choice is to simply walk away. And whatever response is made by those people I already know what my conscious choice will be to that response. It both opens up and limits the field of possibilities. It opens up the field of possibilities in terms of displaying the entire spectrum of choices that could be made, but it limits the field because those choices are made in response to my openness. I consider this to be a kind of time magic. You present people specific information and consequently the field of possibilities open to those people is centered around that information. The information must be dealt with in some form or manner before anything else can be done. The same is true for magical practice in general.

While magic isn’t always complicated, in those situations where it could be complicated, either by working with other people or with other entities, it’s again best to be transparent. The consequent acts of magic, on your part, don’t contain latent possibilities which could trip up the working. These latent possibilities can cause an act of magic to deviate from the desired outcome because they are representative of hidden agendas, on your part, or the part of the entities being worked with. The choice to be open removes potential issues on your part and can, in my own experience, cause a lot more honesty to surface in the work you do with other entities.

You can also use this philosophy in regards to doing solo workings. By being open with yourself, you admit where there could be flaws, subconscious issues, sabotage instincts, or memories. You give them expression through being open and also take away the power they would have if they were latent possibilities. You limit your own response to yourself so that you can ironically be free to make a choice in the possibilities presented to you. The process of magic becomes much simpler once this is done. You’re no longer obsessed with the hidden issues and can focus on the matter at hand.

The premise of this approach ultimately boils down to the concept that once a particular piece of information is revealed, the available possibilities are limited to how the information is dealt with. The act of openly revealing the information creates the limitation in possibilities, because the information must be dealt with. A decision has to be made, and even if that decision is to walk away, it is still made because of the information. We encounter these scenarios every day, but the magician consciously creates such scenarios, and in doing so makes life much simpler for him/herself.

Taylor Ellwood is the author of Pop Culture Magick, Space/Time Magic, Inner Alchemy, Multi-Media Magic and Kink Magic (co-written with Lupa). Taylor is also the managing non-fiction editor for Immanion Press  and a Teacher of experimental magic at the Growing Edge Institute. For more information about Taylor, please visit The Green Wolf or Magical Experiments