(This post first appeared on Substack: Writing Magick with Maggie Sunseri. Click to subscribe.)
In the age of Western capitalist spirituality, manifestation and hustle culture, and watered down New Age modalities adopted from the wisdom and traditions of our ancestors, magick has taken on a great many meanings. Witchcraft, manifestation, magick, or whatever you wish to call the bridge between our internal and external realities, is popularly associated with abundance. With gain. With creation.
Magick is also destruction. It’s loss. It’s letting go. In fact, magick necessitates negative change as much positive change. And when I say negative, I don’t mean “bad.” I mean in terms of objective gains and losses, independent of any emotional connotation. We’re technically losing something when we say goodbye to a toxic relationship. We may even grieve this loss. But we will also come to recognize that this change was necessary and beneficial—and perhaps the space that was left could be filled with a better, more fulfilling love.
If you want change, you have to be prepared for the consequences, regardless of whether or not you practice a spiritual or magickal way of life. It is not enough to write down your dreams on a piece of paper and expect them to suddenly appear in your life. You must be ready to truly embody the kind of person who belongs in those dreams.
Let’s say you want to be a seven-figure indie author. (What a very random dream!) Are you the kind of person that seven-figure authorship would happen to? As in, do you have the skills, mindset, relationships, lifestyle, and focus that align with this exact dream? Are you steering your ship straight for your target? Or are you beholden to rocky waves around you, aimless and frustrated? Are you willing to let go of the parts of yourself and your life that are out of alignment with this dream? Do you understand what serves you and what doesn’t, operating from a place of self-power and wisdom? Or are you listening to the cacophony of loud and irrelevant voices leading you astray?
Do you know what it is that you want, rather than what you have been told to want by your parents, friends, education system, government, or culture?
Are you capable of making intelligent, empowered decisions that might make success slower, but healthier and more sustainable for you as an individual? Can you see past your instinctive, emotional brain in order to rationally assess which 20% of your actions are producing 80% of your results? (AKA the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule.)
If you don’t know these things, are you aware of your own lack of knowledge? Can you ask for help? Can you do research? Or conduct your own testing, trial and error?
Change requires humility.
What I’m describing is complex, nuanced, and difficult. It’s the hard work of our lives. And going in depth could produce one, or perhaps twenty, full-length books on the subject.
But let’s circle back to the seven-figure author example. Let’s say you wrote a seven book fantasy romance series without any prior market research. You adore these books. You’re proud of these books. But man, oh man, are these books hard to sell. (Again, a completely random and impersonal example…)
Do you have the humility and rigorous honesty to assess what went wrong?
Can you assess what went right for other authors in both craft and marketing, and then apply both sets of data to the structuring of your next project?
I love The Lost Witches of Aradia. Those books helped me get sober. They taught me so much about who I am as a human, a writer, and a witch. But, barring a truly improbable series of events, I can say with a high degree of certainty that the TLWOA world will not be getting spin-offs any time soon. I actually think that the later books in the series are fairly to-market, but the main hurdle for readers is a slow and off-market first book. Which is, unfortunately, the most important book in the equation. If I rewrote Book 1 and edited the next six to a lesser degree, I think that would help to an extent.
But, personally, I’d rather leave emotions and the sunk cost fallacy out of my decisions. I’d rather accept that TLWOA was a labor of love, taught me invaluable lessons in marketing, craft, and reader expectations, and rejoice that I’ve now written a single novel—Stalked by Seduction and Shadows—that out-earns all seven previous novels by 1,100%. (Yes, that’s a real number.) If my goal is seven-figure authorship, then it’s clear where my priorities must lie.
And here’s the thing: It’s okay to not care about achieving my dream. It’s okay to dream of something completely different. Or to desire one thing, then change your mind and correct your course.
That’s the beautiful thing about life & magick. We steer our own ships. We control our own destinies, should we so choose.
But you must be intentional, especially when you’re conjuring powerful change. You must take responsibility for your every action and inaction. You must accept that sacrifice, restructuring, growing pains, and fear are all natural consequences of great transformation.
During the eclipse, I planned and executed a portal ritual. I was lucky enough to witness totality—and the beauty, awe, and holy terror I experienced gazing into such astonishing sublimity is hard to put into words. I made sure that moment was one that fundamentally altered me at my very core. This included a series of preparatory and initiatory rites that revolved around getting specific about where I was steering my ship. I created what I call my destiny sigil, or an overarching sigil that contains the foundational elements I want out of my life. These are mostly feelings or grand principles. Examples might be love, joy, freedom, adventure, or wealth. They are non-specific currents that allow plenty of wiggle room for magick to weave a multitude of aligning paths. If I had done this powerful of a ritual for something specific, such as “selling the TV rights for Stalked by Seduction and Shadows, marrying Theo James, and owning exactly five castles in Scotland,” I would’ve severely limited the fates’ ability to weave. Not to mention the moral considerations for poor Theo.
I can go into more detail about this ritual if y’all express interest. But the general idea is that I created a powerful experience for myself to bring my internal and external realities into harmony. I dedicated myself to the life path that I truly desired, using overarching themes and emotions I wish to experience above all others. In doing so, I took deep responsibility for my actions and decisions. I accepted that in creating powerful change, many things were about to shift. I might lose friends or other connections. Or I might gain them, depending on whether they align with my destiny now or in the future. I left ample room for restructuring, for possibilities that I might not yet be able to conceive of. I made a commitment to continuously cleanse or heal myself of attachments, thoughts, wounds, and limitations that might hinder my will. I made the same commitment to actively seek out the skills, relationships, and ideas that would propel me forward on my path.
Ever since this ritual, my life has shifted radically, irreversibly, and with a disorienting swiftness. Thankfully, I was prepared for this transformation, and I’ve been putting in the work to keep things running smoothly despite the sudden reorientation. This is why I was very, very meticulous about the portal I leapt through and why. I would encourage others to practice the same caution in similar workings.
Change can be painful. Modern spirituality, self-help, and witchcraft tends to be polluted by toxic positivity—the idea that magick and manifestation is all love and light. But that isn’t life. Life is cyclical, seasonal. Life is cold and scorching; death and rebirth; brutal and forgiving; soft and unyielding; causes and results; winter and summer; barren and fertile; malleable and rigid.
Learning when to say goodbye with grace is one of the most useful skills we can hone. Whether it’s to a book series that no longer serves our goals, to friendships that no longer nourish us, or to limiting beliefs that hinder our ability to imagine endless possibilities, we must know when to say thank you for the ride and exit the vehicle. As long as we walk in truth, compassion, and intention, these losses can be just as joyous as our fortuitous gains. Odds are, if a relationship no longer serves you, it no longer serves the other party either. Moving with the flow—in radical acceptance—tends to be in everyone’s best interest.
We do not have to stare at our wounds forever. We do not have to cling to the devil we know.
If you want to change your life, it won’t be life that changes. It will be you who changes.
Your life will merely grow around you in a new formation.
Choose wisely.
Be clear about you want. Cut through the noise. Put in the work. Ask for help. Learn when to say goodbye.
And even more thrilling, learn when to say hello.
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(This post first appeared on Substack: Writing Magick with Maggie Sunseri. Click to subscribe.)
