You may have arrived here by searching for “witchcraft,” “spells,” “magical (or magickal) help,” “astral healing,” or a number of other keywords that I don’t actually tend to use much for my practice. The main reason is these ideas have been appropriated and diluted of much of their power by popular culture. Media such as comic books, movies, and streaming shows present a distorted view that then becomes our reality if we’re not careful. Instead, I use the term willwork, and I describe myself as a willworker.
Willwork is just creating change by means of exerting our will. This describes any change we make intentionally–for example, my act of typing these letters into a device that shares them with you, instead of going to the freezer and looking to see if I have ice cream, is certainly a change brought about by my will. So is getting into the car and going to the store to buy ice cream. (It’s a hot day as I write this, and I can feel the sweat trickling down my spine despite the AC running, and I can taste how good some ice cream would be right now, in case you’re wondering why I chose this example.) But generally speaking, we reserve the term “willwork” to refer to cases in which the will affects a change in reality that is not implemented by mundane methods. If instead of going to the store to buy ice cream, I spent a few hours crafting a ritual, or spell, to cause ice cream to come to me, and then by sheer happenstance a friend of mine spontaneously decided to get ice cream and bring it over to my house, I could say that this was due to my act of exercising my will on the universe. (Or, as is more likely, I have made a practice of cultivating generous and thoughtful friends.) Better still, if I realize that my true will is to feel cooler and more comfortable, and I meditate and self-trance until I make myself feel cooler, that’s more direct and efficient willwork that avoids some ethical concerns about exerting my will over others.
Generally, willwork that changes the practitioner’s experience directly is easier, less wasteful, and less likely to trigger unanticipated negative consequences than changing the external world or other beings’ thoughts, perceptions, or behavior. And since usually what we ultimately want is our own experience to be more pleasant or less unpleasant in some way, we’re more likely to be satisfied if we work on our own experience first. However, the “really real world,” our material conditions, do affect us, whatever ultimate reality may lie behind them, and while I can make myself more comfortable with a preventable illness once I’ve been infected by it I’d much rather take the obvious, practical, material steps of preventing contagious diseases in the first place. It’s hard to will anything very effectively with the flu.
So how do we do it? How do we make changes in the world through our will?
As the examples suggest, there are many ways to go about it, but the most important first step is to know what you really want, at your core. Do you really want that promotion at work? Or do you just want a raise? Or better yet, do you actually want the freedom and opportunity the extra income represents to you? Do you need your abusive ex to suffer, or do you need to get yourself safely away from them and recover the self-worth they wounded in you?
Then, when you’ve refined the goal to its essence, you carry out some actions to make that goal your new reality. You ensure you’re not acting in ways contrary to your own will–which is a nearly universal problem–and you instead act in ways that are more likely to bring about the outcome you want.
If you can see an efficient, effective, material conditions way to make the change you need, do that. There is no sense trying to magic up a raise from your boss if you’ve never actually just asked for one. I promise that willwork is not the easy path to anything. But if you truly can’t see how you get from your here to your there by walking or taking the bus, it might be time to try growing wings. Willwork is usually a more arduous path, and it doesn’t always feel good.
So why do it? Well, sometimes we’ve tried everything else. Sometimes we can’t see any other way. And sometimes, it’s because it’s worth it to us to explore reality, expand our mind, and become someone who can accomplish miracles, thauma, through our will, our urges. Sometimes the willwork itself is the point, and we give ourselves challenges, knowingly or unknowingly, to practice.
I call my approach to willwork psychothaumaturgical, because it makes use of demonstrated phenomena of the mind as well as the mystery of how our will can accomplish miracles. The practices that join the two forces seem to be carried out by personal and cultural symbols and practices that powerfully move the unconscious. This is often called ritual magic or spellwork. It’s also why it’s usually pointless to follow spells you found in a book or online, and why I don’t tend to just give someone a spell for something they want to accomplish by magic. You need those symbols to be the ones that have meaning for you. Unless you have immersed yourself in cuneiform and the story of Inanna’s descent into the underworld, I’m afraid that Sumerian demon-trapping bowl isn’t going to do much for you. (Unless, of course, there’s a demon after you that happens to read cuneiform and believe in the power of Sumerian demon-trapping bowls.)
So you research, and you study, and you practice with a set of symbols until your dreams are full of them, and then you design a ritual around these symbols and stories, and then you do the ritual?
Yes, but with the right kind of ritual consciousness. Belief plays into it. It’s okay if you feel kind of ridiculous in a toga pouring wine on the ground, as long as you are absolutely positive Apollo will hear you while you do it. If you’re not, it might be more efficient (certainly in terms of wine) to choose a different set of symbols.
So you carry out the right ritual, with the right consciousness; then what?
Then you expect your will to be done, and look for opportunities for that to be true. Aleister Crowley was said to have felt that his magick worked better if he acted as if the result he wanted was already a reality, so after casting a money spell, he spent his last pennies on ice cream. The merits of Crowley’s practice, or ethics, or the truth of anything he wrote and published notwithstanding, it helps to believe that your will is working and look for those opportunities. Crowley would not have hesitated to pick up a five pound note out of the gutter if that’s how his will was manifesting change in his material circumstances. There is no sense being like the proverbial believing Christian trapped on a rooftop with the floodwaters rising, praying for the angels to rescue him–when the helicopter arrives, you’re a fool if you drown waiting on a shinier miracle.
So willwork is a practice, and an act of will has a preparatory stage, an action stage, and a stage of change observation. Afterward, if you are systematic about things–and not all of us are or need to be–you record what you’ve learned in a way that makes sense to you and you use it to inform your future willwork. Then, almost always, you clean up whatever remnants of your work has been left lying around. It’s not good practice to leave bits of your will hanging out all over the place where anyone can step on it. Magical OSHA would have something to say about that. It’s a trip and fall hazard, at the least.
And this is basically all you really need to know about willwork, and in very broad strokes, it’s what I know about it. There are many books covering the details and you can probably find them in your local library if you can’t afford to buy them from the hardworking witches and ceremonial magickians and self-styled shamans who wrote them. If you want to study and practice alone, have at it. As with many skills you could learn, however, things tend to go faster and with less injury if you can afford the skills of a coach or mentor. If you’re going rock climbing for the first time, you need a more experienced climber to set the rope, check your harness and knot, and hold the other end of the rope and belay you. There isn’t time to willwork yourself a padded landing on the way down if you’ve missed any of those steps.
If you want to learn how to be more effective in the world at using your will and getting what you want, a willworking mentor might be just what you need. We’re a little thin on the ground these days, but if I’m not the right fit, I’m happy to ask around and see if I can connect you to someone who is. Please feel free, feel welcome, to reach out if you have any questions.
You can reach me at carrick@wanderstoneconsulting.com.