Magic! Spell Work! Why Is It Taking So Long?

I do spell work for other people on a regular basis as my day job. Whether its a candle or a honey pot or a full blown Come to Me ritual, the most common question I get asked is, “Why is it taking so lonnnnnnng?”

The primary reason why magic seems to take forever to manifest is that most people, even some Witches, do not have a sound understanding of how magic works. This is not intended as an insult. Most people are not clear on how magic does its thing and can’t be until they do it all the time and see ongoing trial and error responses. Here are some things to consider when creating your expectations of response to your spell work.

Science is a thing

Magical energy is energy and as such, responds to the Newtonian Laws of Physics and Motion. These are premises you may have learned in high school science such as “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Another one is “when force is applied to a certain object, it moves and when greater force is applied, it moves faster.” Then there’s “When a moving object encounters resistance, it slows down in direct response to the amount of resistance.”

To translate this out to spell work, our goal requires a certain amount of energy to manifest. Every magical or mundane act we add to the equation gets us closer to that maximum load needed to make The Thing happen. The trick is, we never know to measure of that special lucky maximum load until it manifests.

Some factors both in and outside of our control create resistance to our goals and slow down our work. As humans who are not typically omniscient beings, we can’t really know how many factors are working against us to create resistance at any given time.

If our ex is missing us and pining for us and we do a love spell to bring them back, it might be just enough to tilt the scales of fate and bring back the ex. If our ex is now happily married to someone else, is still pissed at us for cheating on them, and has moved to another state, it will take more than one candle to make that happen.

In this case, each of those factors represents a quantitative amount of resistance that impedes our progress. This means we need significantly more force behind our spell work in the second scenario than we would in the first.

Imagine that our spell work is actually us moving a large, heavy box across a warehouse floor. We have to push this huge, ridiculously heavy box far away to the other side. If other people help us push, more energy/force is applied and we get to the other side faster. If someone sits on top of the box and we push by ourselves, it takes longer and it’s harder to move the box. If the floor is smooth and there is little resistance, we can move the box more easily. If the floor is rough, uneven and splintered, it is harder for us to move the box.

Tall orders

There are some people, and we all know them, who use spell work to manipulate every aspect of their life. Most people, however, end up lighting candles at their altar or stirring the cauldron when they need something special. This usually means something BIG that they cannot make manage on their own: someone banished from their life, a new partner, a new house, an ex’s return and sudden infatuation with them, a new job, etc. These magical projects take a HUGE amount of energy to manifest and people often erroneously belief that one little spell… or even one intense Full Moon night of a big spell, is enough. Most often, it is not.

Big changes need big energy to manifest and that usually comes through sustained, ongoing magical effort over an extended time. For best results, settle in, get comfy, and plan to lean into it for a while. Think again about the science behind energy. I can’t run a refrigerator on a 9 volt battery. If I keep building up energy through extended work and sympathetic magical components, I can hit 120 volts and that refrigerator light comes on.

Basically, you keep slamming on the hammer game until you get enough muscle behind you to ring the bell.

Free Will Overrides

If you think about it, most spell work involves overriding the free will and possibly best interests of another person. If we manifest a parking place close to the entrance of a store, we displace other shoppers who may need the closer space more than we do. If we do spell work to get a promotion at work, someone else who wanted the promotion might lose out. Sometimes, it is our own free will that creates resistance. An example is a person who comes to me for spell work to get a job when they really love being home on the couch. The mixed signals created by what we want versus what we know we should want can create resistance to our work. By these standards, we can extrapolate that all spell work has at least some level of resistance and free will is a big one.

More times than I care to admit, a client wants me to do spell work for them that completely mows the grass of someone else’s free will. “Force them to love me.” “Break up this marriage.” “Get rid of my annoying co-worker.” In these cases, the will of the person wanting the work must be stronger than the will of the target to keep things as they are. For those of you who do not live in this part of the magical kingdom, you would be surprised how often people want to puppet string others.

In any of these cases, free will = resistance to the energy.

Greater Good Overrides

Every now and then, The Universe steps in to save us from ourselves. Most of the time, it sits back with popcorn and laughs like mad when we fall on our ass, but once in a great while, it protects us by NOT giving us what we want. My belief is that the majority of our life is completely within our control. There are, however, these certain immutable points that we must accomplish to stay on track to our manifest destiny. As long as we keep these dates with destiny, all is well. When we work magic to create an outcome that conflicts with those predetermined outcomes, the spell work falls flat.

This is the Magical Parent equivalent of “sometimes, the answer is just ‘no.'” We tend to believe that if we just throw enough magic at something, it will eventually happen. I have not found this to be true.

To accept that what we want does not want us or that there is just too much resistance to our desired outcome is quite an act of grace and surrender. If it softens the blow at all, what I have also found is that more often, “No,” often means “Not yet,” or “Something even better is coming in five, four, three, two…”

Timing

The unfortunate fact, at least in my own experience, is that the energies we engage in spell work have no respect for or interest in our human-created concept of “time.” I can’t count the times I have put my all into manifesting a specific outcome, got distract after weeks of work and gave up, only to have the EXACT outcome manifest, completely to my specification, years later.

“Um, hey, I needed this back then, but thanks.”

Often, it isn’t that our expectations are unreasonable, but simply that the timing is not right. Perhaps we are ready to meet our perfect soul mate but they are a few months out from being ready to meet us. Maybe that job we want so desperately is about to be eliminated due to down-sizing and getting hired into it would be tragic for us after a few months.

A delay is sometimes – I would even say usually – in our best interest when it manifests.

When the Force Stops

I mentioned that an object moves when we apply force to it and magically, the energy moves when we push it along. If we stop pushing, the magic immediately begins to wane. Like a battery that is cranking out energy, magic will eventually run out of steam and die. I will go so far as to say, “No magic is permanent,” although many in their ego will deny this is true. Unless we continually feed a spell, the spell slows and then stops. This slow down begins almost as soon as the spell work completes.

We light a candle and put huge energy into it. We spend time with the candle as it burns, adding to the aggregate energy. When the candle finishes, the magical energy that is out there continues on until it winds down.

For this reason, I recommend keeping candle work or other spell work going pretty much nonstop until your goal manifests. Like I said before, lean into it. Lighting a candle here and there helps add energy to the aggregate energy need for the goal, but the slow down creates an energy gap you ultimately have to make up.

If we go back to the analogy of pushing the box across the warehouse floor, in this case, we push a little while and then stop, then mop our sweaty brow and wonder why it isn’t at the other end of the warehouse with the effort we expended. To be successful, we have to keep the energy going strong until we reach our goal.

Acts of Faith

As much as we might not wish to believe it, magic is about faith. I once saw wise words on a church bulletin board:

“Don’t dig up in doubt what you planted in faith.”

Many HooDoo spells tell you to go to the crossroads, do X, Y, and Z, then walk away without looking back. There is a reason why we don’t look back. We need to do the magic and let it go to do what it does. If we suspect what we want is a big ticket item, we dedicate ourselves to repeated investments of energy toward the outcome. It might take one candle or one-hundred candles. We just can’t tell and of course, all my clients want guarantees. They want to know that I can get their husband back from his mistress in only a week. It just doesn’t work like that.

Like PG&E, I sell energy and time with no end game on how much it will take of either to accomplish the client’s goal. There are many components to the story that a client might not think to tell me or might deliberately omit. What I do – and what most people who do spell work for themselves will do – is to keep throwing magic toward the goal until they get what they want or in my case, what the client wants.

We have the faith that if this is meant to be, it will be and that our investment of magical energy is part of what helps it to be. We always as “for the equal or better” in case we can’t see what wonderful and better things are on the horizon for us. We ask that spell neutralize if it would harm anyone. We ask that greatest wisdom prevail and that our intentions be honorable.

Acts of Science

Magical energy is a science we do not yet and may never fully understand. I can see that it is neutral until colored by human intent. I know and understand that there are conductors and resistors to magical energy. I believe that we are a vital part of the magical process and that if we can better our lives through magic, we absolutely should.

The handshake of these scientific principals that apply well to magical energy and the contrition of grace and integrity of faith in the overall process is what creates a sound and reasonable magical practice. Too often, we want what we want when we want it and become petulant when our desired outcome does not manifest right away. With spell work, we plant the seed and keep watch to see how much fertilizer, sun, water, and extra nutrients it needs to grow. Ultimately, we cannot get in there and force that little life to push its way past the husk of seed and pop out of the earth. We have to surrender some part of the process to nature and to the forces, opposing and conducive, that we do not immediately see.