Why Self Care And Wellness In Intense Magical Practice Is Important

I’ve already covered how learning basic rules on how to get fit and healthy are not terribly dissimilar to what works for self care in magic. This blog post is more like the “advanced” version of that post, as I want to cover some crucial pointers for people getting into more intense magical workings and practices.

Once you start doing more heavy duty work, either rituals that require a great amount of effort or are intense ones which occur over a lengthy period of time, prepping from magic starts to turn into what was prepping for a 30 min regular workout at the gym to a 10k or a half marathon. Rituals such as the Abramelin, any trance possession work, focused ritual on a particular cause, anything which can potentially take a lot out of you needs to be followed up with all the self care during and after. This especially goes for anything which you are new to.

Some suggestions include the following:

1. Hydrate. This is for practical reasons, some of which include things such as burning incense. That will dry you up. Also make sure that your electrolytes are taken care of. Even watering down a sports drink or adding a packet to your water can help.
2. Don’t eat crappy food no matter how tempted you are to indulge or treat yourself. Eat healthy, eat balanced meals. You will need the fuel.
3. Get all of the sleep. If what you are doing is disturbing your sleep patterns, you will definitely have to focus on #1 and #2.
4. Do grounding and centering energy exercises. Go out for walks outside, be outdoors, meditate, get focused.
5. Take care of your spiritual and magical hygiene. You will absolutely need all of the purification and maintenance. Consider it like showering after a long, sweaty run. I have plenty of suggestions on that in my blog post here.
6. Pay attention to your energy levels. Don’t push yourself, try a new strenuous physical workout routine, or anything like that. Play it safe, listen to your body. If you can do the thing, do the thing but don’t be surprised if you’re a little “off”.

While some magical work can energize you and make you feel great, so can a runner’s high. Don’t let that deter you from taking care of yourself and not identifying when you need to take the appropriate steps to make sure that all of you is being taken care of.

What sorts of things can happen to you if you don’t follow through with these suggestions? Well for one thing, you can actually get physically sick. I personally know of people who have done an intense working and then threw up afterwards. Not good! Me personally, after I finished the final week of my Abramelin I came down an illness less than a week later, fever and all. I honestly blame the fasting and probably lack of proper hydration, but mostly I blame the overall stress on my system. Your immune system will take a hit during these types of workings.

Other things that can occur is personal energy imbalances that can affect the effectiveness of your magic. Ask any runner what the difference between how they feel at mile five versus mile ten or eleven for a half, or mile twenty for a half marathon. It’s a vast difference. Your performance may take a hit, and you obviously will want to continue to stay the course and make the finish line.

No matter how long you have been training and practicing for, you will still have to take into consideration the fact that you are human and taking care of yourself is important. Ask any experienced athlete if they still have to stretch, fuel, drink water, foam roll and the answer will still be “yes” no matter how long they’ve been at it. It’s the same for taking care of yourself an occultist doing any lengthy and/or intense workings.

In short never, ever underestimate the impact of what a major or lengthy magical working can potentially do to you physically as well as mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.