Experimental Magic: The Evolution of Magic

Experiment with your magical practice by learning how to apply art, pop culture, neuroscience, psychology, and other disciplines to your magical work, as well as exploring fundamental underlying principles of what makes magic work. You'll never look at magic in the same way!

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Eros, Movement, and Magic

In my previous post I discussed the elemental balancing ritual and explained how I'd moved from a traditional elemental model to a non-traditional approach to elements. With this post I'd like to share my work with the element of Movement as mediated by Eros.

I always get an idea of which element I'll be working with next about halfway through the year of the prior elemental working. In the case of movement, what told me it would be the next element was how I came across several references to movement in relationship to identity. Since I am continuing my work with identity as a principle of magic, I knew it was essential to explore movement in relationship to magic.

I've also been reading a lot of R. J. Stewart's work and in one of his works he discusses the relationship that Eros has to movement, and how movement is a primal force of the universe. Reading that struck me and I felt a strong sense of connection with Eros. I did a ritual to him, asking him if he was the entity that could mediate the element of movement for me and he indicated he could but I would need to get a statue of him if I was to work with him. I got the status shortly before the transition from the element of Fire to the element of Movement.

When I do the ritual to invoke the entity that mediates the element for me, what I am really doing is inviting that entity into my life for the year that I work with that element. The entity will show up at various times and offer insights and perspectives about situations I'm involved in, or I'll meditate about the element and the entity will come as a guide to share information with me or to provide an insight.

I've been working with Eros since mid October and I'm about to enter my fourth month of work. The work has been intense and has involved me looking at the element of movement as it applies to my body, my relationship with my money, my relationship with other people, and even how I connect with myself. My exploration of movement as an elemental force has shown me how much movement defines people's behaviors, space, and the way they resolve problems.

The whole purpose of this ritual is to help a person discover how an element fits into their lives. You develop a relationship with the element and with the entity that mediates the element. My work with Eros is intimate. He is always there in the background and in the moments when he comes forward I feel his hand on my shoulder, his breath touching the nape of my neck, his words echoing through my being. He moves me and in that process teaches me about movement and what it is like to let myself be moved, as well as what it can be like to move.

This work in turn shapes my magical practice. I find myself thinking of magic in terms of movement and how movement manifests in our lives. I examine how I have used magic to generate movement to resolve problems or bring change into my life or even to discover people. And when I work magic now I look at how I can integrate movement into my process.

The transformation of my relationship with movement is intentional and yet is is also a process of surrender. I surrender myself to the experience of the element and allow it to flow into my life and bring change about. All of the changes are ultimately for the best, even if at the time they seem negative. When the year is up I will work with movement in a different way. I will look at the world through a different perspective and even though the year will be done, the element of movement will still be in the background ready to be called upon at any time. The intimate year long journey will create a connection between myself and the element that allows me to express inwardly and outwardly.

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Taylor Ellwood is the author of Pop Culture Magic Systems, Space/Time Magic, Magical Identity and a number of other occult books. He posts about his latest projects at Magical Experiments.

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