@WonderFire:
IMHO you need some kind of power to fuel your magick.
If you don't have inner power you'll need external fuel source.
I totally agree with Wonderfire in this fuel aspect, and as a dream walker, I would also add that you need to get above the event horizon where time unfolds and the physical manifests to change what physically manifests. Then, that which is destined by the more powerful cannot be changed unless you are more powerful. It is rare, like every few thousand years, that something more powerful comes here physically. If any of the many entities that do have fuel can aid you, some changes can happen and are sometimes defined as magic. But that is not the energy or fuel of the practitioner when an entity comes to their aid, it is a working relationship and the magic is not their own.
Also, if anyone around you has more energy/fuel and focuses on a different aspect than what you are intending, you will lose that battle. Like the observer effect in science, if they live and breath in your operating space, they can stifle and block every bit of your intent by simply being more at one with the world at large and the manifestations that would flow if you were not trying to change that flow. So, you have a lot of hill to climb to be able to overcome the event horizon flow, and the intent of all those around you that participate in that flow.
There is an awful lot of synchronicity and happenstance that those who practice certain things will claim as magic. In a more recent study looking for people with any actual Psi skills, only 0.04% of those selected could actually perform on demand. Around 20% of the population have regular phenomena happening, which they don't control, but recognize as fringe or supernatural. The mobs of basement magicians are mostly wishful thinkers and posers, between Mom bringing them more hot pockets and the usual gaming. They are stuck in the event horizon flow.
In my world, many of these operations are carried out in altered states, or on other planes, and are only rehearsed in the physical form. The instruments for these operations must have multi-dimensional counterparts, they exist here in the physical, and in other realms, thus they are also special instruments and not household items.
People agree to disagree on the many methods and forms, but in order to generate more inner fuel, you practice the things that increase your energy, which includes removing behavior and thought changes that waste energy. You would need to see the flow, and know what you can change and what you cannot. You would collect the things that have their own energy, and find entities with the correct energy configurations to actually help you. To do this, you need to perceive energy and know the differences, and how to manipulate it. These methods are not just believing, or repeating words or incantations, and sigils, talismans, and amulets are nothing without actually knowing how to manipulate energy and correctly connect them and charge them.
The fast pace of some of the magical teachings of today are usually not sufficient to control and manipulate energy, or to step above the event horizon to actually cause change. Magic words and incantations, spells and other repeated things mean nothing if they aren't coming from a place of energetic configuration and spoken together with your own alters that exist in other states. The energy of a talisman, for example, isn't something we physically measure here in this time and space, but we can feel it, and see it, but not with our eyes obviously.
Thus, developing this part of yourself that engages with energy, can perceive and feel energy, can transcend dimensions with altered states, and that then has access to magic, should be the goal of real magic practices.
Some people claim that begins with meditation. Some people are born accessing it. People who write books and try to teach may be accessing it without even being aware of their own alters and how they function, or they have entities helping them and think it is the magic operations.
There are many ways to achieve same/similar results, but I believe most of the materials out there are nothing to bother with, and are likely driven by mental health issues or worse.
I measure things using one rule, and one rule only:
What can you actually do? And none of the people claiming things can actually do much of anything that would impress anyone. Those who can don't usually talk about it, and they don't usually hang on the books or lessons of someone who can't.
My suggestion would be to start with altered states, whether trance, dreaming, out of body, or whatever, and then take your intent and magic to the places where your altered states are active, and only practice doing them here and now in the physical.
Sorry you got off on the wrong track, but a good thing you noticed before you just tossed it out the window.
