Understanding the “Limits” of Spellwork – a pre-spell primer

Hey Occulties,

As I'm about to put up a new spell for you all to use, I'd like to take a moment to discuss realistic expectations and the sphere of availability, because, while I've discussed this before, we all know a lot of people won't take the time to peek at those articles, and I want to be sure everyone has a fair grasp on what to expect. 

Now, I want you to think of something you really want, and make it something that is pretty far out of your reach at this moment, but not so far that it's ridiculous. So, let's say right now you can't afford a car and don't have one, but you'd be willing to settle for a used one…and if you're being fair, you really like one that costs around $10k. Problem being, you don't make $10k per month right now, and even if you did, you have rent and utilities and bills to worry on so it's not like you even have the means to spend every penny you make on a car. By your estimation, what you CAN save per month, means that a used car will take you almost 18 months to get. To complicate this, you will need to buy insurance and pay for costs of registering the car, etc, and that means it could take an added 2 months on top of that. You really don't want to settle for anything lesser as it might just fall apart and then you need repair costs, so you feel kind of stuck. 

In short, spending $10k on a vehicle is kind of out of your reach.

You look into getting a loan but the loan is also going to cost you more per month than you can afford to spare. It might cut down the time you need to save if you get this loan, but now you're strangling your finances in 6-8 months if you get it then, and making it perilous for yourself because if you are going to have 0 left over after paying the car loan monthly…well, one little unforeseen emergency happening means that car could cost you your home if it was a big enough emergency (rentals aren't cheap and neither are mortgages, ugh.) 

So, you turn to magic. You do a spell and now there's a pretty nice used car for cheaper. It's still out of your price range because it's $6k. You see a real junker and that might be something you can get in a month, but again, it will likely need repair even though it's pretty good for a $2k car, and it has about 43 million miles on it, so how much longer is it going to last? Your options improved a lot, but it's still out of your reach! What gives? 

Well, look, I'll be honest and say I've seen some "get a vehicle" spells manifest very nicely with someone getting something in their price range and in good repair for quite a steal, so this isn't to discourage you from trying…but we sometimes need to be more mindful of our sphere of availability, and in this case, the person seeking a $10k car now when it's so far out of their budget, was not being mindful. The desired outcome lay too far beyond the borders of their sphere of availability. 

Imagine now that my neighbor Bob has a gorgeous mature rosebush with two-toned red and gold roses. I look at his rosebush every day and want one like that for myself. So I go to the local hardware and garden store, and lo and behold there are some options for similar types of roses. One costs around $20 and is not even a shrub. It's baby tea roses in a pot – basically what rose seedlings are, and plus I want full sized roses like Bob, not little tea roses. The next is about $30 and is a dormant shrub. It looks like a twig with roots. Now the next option is a "bush" that looks like a wooden chicken foot and leg (not the meaty part, haha,) covered in wax coming out of dirt, and this is about $40. Then there is a smaller bush all bloomed up and full of foilage and this looks similar to Bob's mature bush, just much much much smaller, and this is $60. I look and look and finally in one store I find a bush much like Bob's rose bush (a bit smaller maybe but quite close to the same,) and this is $125.

My maximum budget though, is $30.

Now before I go on, the "maximum budget" is your maximum reach to bring to you that which you desire, with the rosebush being the desired end result. In spells I might want something grandiose, but I have to keep in mind how much power I have to draw to myself that which I want. So much like my "budget," my energy will only pull something in so far, okay?

So, I go home with a dormant shrub which if you are a horticulturist at all, you will know….it looks like a tiny twig haha. But it's all I could get. Is this a loss? Not really, because if I care for the plant, if I nurture it, I will eventually have a bush rivaling my neighbor's mature rosebush. Of course…it might take a few years. However, whilst I was at the garden shop, I had noticed that bloomed shrubs went for $60. So, I go home and plant my little dormant rose shrub and it blooms within a month. I sell it back to the garden shop for a trade of two dormant shrubs, and in a month, I raise those up. 

Now back to our magic. The shrub represents how far you can get with your spell. You got to one benchmark, then you went back and did another spell, and now you're much closer to your goal. Because you got your shrub, let's say you're about a quarter there, then when you trade for two, you're halfway there when you bloom those out, and now trading them for four, when these little dormant shrubs mature into foliage and flowers, now you can trade for that nice mature rose bush, just like your neighbors. 

BUT, it took you 3-4 months to do this. You did not do it in one step. Still….you could have worked on that first dormant shrub you bought for a few years and had this as well…just you sped up the outcome by continually working towards your goal to bring the desired end more rapidly.

Spells can work like this. I may want something well out of my reach. But if I work to get a few steps closer, and let the spell manifest, then use magic to go another step further and faster than I could get there without the spellwork, the thing I want can still be mine. I just can't accomplish it in one step. I have to work towards it like I did with the rose bush example. 

People don't like this. We live in an instant gratification type of society. 

And allow me to be very frank – I want what I want RIGHT NOW too, haha. 

It's only natural we feel this way. We have been raised to see the goal and yet we don't emphasize to people that often to reach a big goal, there's plenty of steps involved. 

Have you ever been to a friend's home (or maybe your own,) where the friend had gotten depressed and stopped cleaning for a month or two? It's not uncommon and many people I know have had this happen or have seen it happen. Now the house is a mess and they are overwhelmed. How do you solve this problem? It's a lot to clean, but you start by focusing on one chore. So you tell your friend, start gathering the dirty laundry and put it in the washer, and I will start washing the dishes and putting them away. You move through the house like this. You focus on one chore, and then the next and in a few hours that house will look so much cleaner than it did, and you won't feel like it's overwhelming to keep going. 

Well, working towards a goal works like that, too. You focus on a step that is closer in reach. So if we go back to our car example, I might say…look, part of the problem is I don't make enough money to get the car I want or to keep it if I get it. So, what I could do, is I might do some work for a promotion at work to make more, or a new job. I will need to keep in mind it needs to be something I have the training and qualifications to do, and that the pay scale must be realistically what people can expect as pay for that job. No one is going to pay you $125/hr to flip burgers or sell shoes. HOWEVER, if you're making $16/hr at your current job, but there's another one you have all the qualifications for (just in a different industry,) for $40/hr (and maybe it's not something you would love doing – maybe it's cleaning houses, but you know how and it's not hard,) then you might do a spell to get the job if you want to ensure you get it. Now you're making a lot more per week, and this goes towards affording a car. 

I'm purposely using numbers to help you understand. We tend to understand that if we want a thing that costs x, and we earn y, that we must save for a specific time or earn more to get an item that is currently out of our financial reach.

And when you think about it, if you are now earning almost 3x what you once made, you might be able to budget and get the car that way…but it's still going to take longer than you'd like just budgeting. HOWEVER, since you make more, you might do a spell to get a car you want and be able to afford it, and now, suchas in our earlier example, you are getting options you can afford, whereas before you were not because you earned so little. 

So with each step we take, we increase our sphere of availability. That means we increase the reach of our magic. If you think on the rosebush example, first I had one $30 bush, but when I got that, I quickly made it so my reach was now double what it was when I hit that goalpost. I then quadrupled my budget by working a bit again, thus quadrupling my sphere of availability. With the car example, I worked on the main issue keeping me from being able to afford a car – low income, – and by increasing my income, I increased my sphere of availability, thus making a car within my reach – even by using a spell to get a more affordable option than I'd have without a spell. 

So, we focus on one problem that's keeping us from our desired goal, rather than the whole end goal. We do this and as we fix or repair the smaller issues, we grow our sphere of availability, which in turn brings us to our desired goal faster with each step. 

WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH GETTING MY EX BACK? some of you are saying. 

Ah, well, I stuck to numbers because that's a bit more logical than love, but that's a fair question. Let's say your ex moved away, isn't talking to you, is still very angry with you, and you think one stinky reconciliation spell will fix that. Well, you try that and unbeknownst to you, your ex forgives you, but they still don't want to speak to you, still live far away, and just forgiving you didn't mean you were getting back together. In fact, from where you are, it looks like nothing happened at all. That's OK though. Maybe you should try a communication spell next, okay? And so you do, and now you're unblocked and your ex asks you something pretty unromantic and doesn't seem too interested in coming back…and still lives far away. Well, you might try a love-drawing spell next. Now your ex texts you and is flirty and seems kinda interested in you again! So other than this person living far away, you basically are so close to what you want! Well, now you'll have to tackle the distance issue, either through magical or not magical means, but you have your ex wrapped around your finger so I bet you're a lot happier. 

But it took steps, didn't it? Just like all the above examples took steps. With each step, you grew your sphere of availability but you had to tackle a few issues to get to where you want. 

Realize then that there are a lot of things we want right now that might be enough out of our reach that we will require steps to get there. This isn't a failure on the part of magic itself, but rather a failure of the petitioner or spellcaster (depending on if the petitioner is the spellcaster or is dishonest with their spellcaster,) to accurately assess the amount of work required to get to the goal. So when you do a working with the intention of say getting your ex to come back, if there's a lot of damage and issues, it can easily require a few workings to bring that goal into your life. It means that it won't take 5 days or something equally short to get what you want. 

And unfortunately there are a lot of charlatans out there who feed on people who don't understand spells and magic who have this desire to have what they want RIGHT FUCKING NOW, and so they will tell you they can bring something to fruition without steps or even without requiring a few days. They are basically saying they are super-powerful. Yet if we look at magic like a muscle, the amount of muscles they would need to do what they say would basically mean they are Godzilla and not human. Realistically, an expert caster may need weeks or even a few months on really difficult problems that are well outside of the client's sphere of availability. 

And, if you are the spellcaster, if you're an expert you may have more "muscles" in casting spells, but if you're a beginner…you may have less reach from not having built up this strength. It should never reach Godzilla-strength so be wary of those who claim to be able to tackle every issue with such speed and ability, but yes, and expert should be able to bring more and faster than someone unpracticed. YET ALL OF US NEED TO MIND THE SPHERE OF AVAILABILITY because by so doing, we not only keep our expectations in a realistic place, but we also spend less time reaching that goal by creating goalposts which help us get there. 

Hopefully that made some sense.

~Cat