Here’s a new posting to Jason Miller’s Strategic Sorcery blog regarding “luck”:
“A few years ago I wrote that magicians should not be defined by a complete lack of problems, but how they handle those problems. I hold to that, but my friend Sara Mastrospointed out that a successful Sorcerer should also be accompanied by uncommonly good luck. She’s right. I don’t think any Sorcerer worth their salt should spend their life responding to personal emergencies or fighting for every scrap of progress. If you are a person who keeps a regular practice it is not unreasonable to expect that shit should start to just work out. But like everything else in Strategic Sorcery, there is a skill to it. Luck is not just a condition of birth like your sparkly eyes or that weird 3rd nipple… Luck can be generated.
“There are a few methods that I use to generate luck for myself. Try these out and see if your luck gets better.
“1. Daily Offerings –
Not just to specific spirits, but widespread offerings. We use four classes in Strategic Sorcery, but it is good enough to just make an offering to the spirits of the air, land, and underworld where you live. Pour some libarion, light some incense. Do it every day. Do. It. Every. Day.Not feeling “receptive” today? Not feeling “into it”? Not “in the right headspace“? Do it anyway. It’s not about you. Take care of the spirits and the spirits will take care of you. Shit will start to work out almost as if the universe is conspiring with you. 1000 unnamed helpers from the land in which you live often outweigh the influence of the Archdemon that you spent 3 hours conjuring.”
Read all six suggestions:
It’s also a good idea to occasionally and willingly abstain from various rituals or offerings– Tarl Warwick (YouTube name: Styxhexenhammer666) talks about this in his books.
Take for example, the Christian Monk. They’re supposed to abstain from all the “worldly pleasures” for the sake of god, or what have you.
However, from talking to some of these people, if you’ve had the chance, you’ll start to get the impression that a good amount of them didn’t become celibate priests, give up alcohol, etc out of desire to submit to askesis, but because they can’t handle themselves or can’t resist temptation, so instead, they just physically remove themselves from the temptation rather than directly combatting what plagues them and becoming stronger.
There was an early Christian / Gnostic sect which held that one can’t be “saved” and renounce the various sins unless they’ve personally committed them, and became good at committing them, first, and then gave them up afterwards.
One can imagine how that might result in some… excesses or degeneracy, or how some people claiming to be pious might use that as an excuse to engage in debautchery under the guise of holiness. But, in its proper place, I would view it as a superior form of asceticism than simple renunciation of the world flat-out.