how to get scandalous power, magick, alchemy via Amor Fati
"Amor fati" - isn't it a beautiful phrase? It means "the love of one's Fate" and it comes from Stoic philosophy.
What's your Fate? Well, as Nietzsche reminded us - it's your life, of course, and everything that happens in it.
The Stoics have a modern reputation for being stone-faced weirdos who refused to feel their feelings, but that isn't quite true.
In truth, the Stoics refused to indulge useless and pointless feelings, like pouty emotional reactivity in the face of life's inevitable difficulties.
The Stoics recognized that such indulgence drains life energy that could be otherwise be used towards simply cultivating virtue (wise power) enjoying existence with all its ups and downs: a path they called eudaimonia, the good life.
What a lot of people who study the tenets of Stoicism don't realize is that "Amor Fati" also has a magical dimension to it.
Why? Because in the Hellenistic world where Stoicism arose, and throughout the ancient world, one's Fate was indeed "what happened" but it wasn't just that.
One's Fate was also understood to be a very important spirit that could be worked with.
In Persia, the Magi (literally the group where the term "magic" comes from) called this spirit the Fravashi.
The Romans called it the Genius, and set up altars in their homes to honor it.
The Greeks called it the Agathosdaimon, the Good Spirit. (The spirt could be either good or bad in its effects, but best to call it "good' to get it on your side, no?)
In Great Britain, these spirits were called the Fae and regularly given offerings. The English word Fae came from the Latin word Fata, for Fate.
The Norse called this spirit the Fate, Fetch, or Fylja, and said it usually appeared to people only as they were dying, but that powerful witches and magicians knew how to dialogue with their Fate while still alive and thereby modify it.
Pretty much all cultures saw an individual's relationship with their Fate as being deeply related to ancestral matters, merits, debts - what the Hindu world calls karma.
This historical information becomes very useful in connection with an endlessly important principle in magic.
This principle is so important that if you really internalize it and deploy it you will never lack for any of the good things in life.
It goes like this: in order to wield influence over anything in creation, you need to love it completely.
Not love it a little, not love it possessively, not love it graspingly or anxiously - but just love it with whole-hearted, deep, surrendered love.
Love is what brings creatures together, via sympathy. Magic operates through sympathetic influence of lover to beloved and vice versa.
This is why astrological talismans use numbers, colors, metals, oils, scents, sigils known to "correspond" or "resemble" a given planet's energies in order to invoke those energies via sympathetic (loving) similarity.
artist unknown, image found without attribution
Think about it: who has influenced you most in life? Hasn't it been the people who you knew totally loved you? Adoring parents, devoted teachers, dear friends?
How likely are you to be influenced by someone who you know dislikes you?
Would you want to read books or go on trips that they recommend... when you know they think you're kind of lousy and boring?
Wouldn't you be far more likely to reject the influence or suggestion of someone who you know dislikes you?
Well, all of reality works in exactly the same way.
All creatures, all created things (including Fates) allow themselves to be most influenced, most changed, most persuaded by beings who they know truly, selflessly love them.
Would you like to change your Fate so that instead of seeming to repeat the same conditions over and over you're able to experience something dramatically, wildly, wonderfully new?
Excellent. You can do this. Very simple.
First, fall stupidly, pathetically, disgustingly, hopelessly in love with your Fate, with your life, exactly as it is...
... including with all your own shortcomings, and with all the people and institutions that have ever hurt you (-- don't worry, you can pathetically love them from a safe distance, you don't have to be actively talking to someone to love them).
Next, let your Fate know about some other things you would enjoy. Healing, tons of money, romance, etc.
Best to use images, poetry, music, and symbol to communicate this because one's Fate is identical with the Unconscious and the Unconscious speaks in the language of dreams (images, poetry, music, symbol).
("Unless you make the unconscious, conscious, it will rule your Life and you will call it Fate" - Carl Jung rightly said).
Here's a further grand secret:
When you fall in love with your Fate this way, it does indeed begin to appear to you in dreams as a guide or lover, and just as the Norse indicated....
.... you can indeed become powerful by dialoguing with it and thereby you can alter your whole experience of life.
This is also known as part of Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel in the Western esoteric tradition that came down via the Golden Dawn and its off-shoots, including Aleister Crowley's Thelema.
That's it. That's the essence of how to dramatically change your life for the better using magic. Very simple.
Yet by oneself, it can be amazingly hard to do!
Why?
Because all of our conditioning from society teaches us to strongly reject big elements of our experience, namely: whatever we find less-than-good, less-than-perfect, hurtful, dirty, destructive, ugly about ourselves, other people, our lives.
In other words, all of us have learned to heartily despise our Fate as "not good enough."
When we do this, we also despise ourselves, because our Fate is the larger part of us, beyond our ego.
Hence our society (the modern USA at least from what I can see) is rife with all sorts of addiction, all sorts of misery and illness, all sorts of blocks to creativity and blocks to harmony in relationships....
.... because hardly anyone knows how to practice Amor Fati, how to love and commune with their Fate.
If you don't learn how to do this magic, you're more at risk for succumbing to these societal ills.
You may already know many people in your acquaintance who have already succumbed to addiction, despair, broken relationships -- especially during these trying Pandemic times.
So, my humble, urgent advice: learn how to do magic.
best,
Carolyn Elliott
author of Existential Kink: unmask your shadow and embrace your power
P.S. To hear me tell a personal story of far-out magical synchronicity connected to the Alchemical Journal practice, click here.
P.P.S. Because accomplishing the simple steps of magic entails undoing all of our previous conditioning and habits of rejection...
.... to learn to do it quickly, it really really helps to have experienced teachers, supportive community, and instruction in practices that dissolve old conditioning.
In order to provide this, my husband Taia and I created WEALTH: the exclusive community where leaders come into their full power via the Hermetic Arts.
WEALTH is an immersive long-term community designed to form the strong foundation of a New Aeon of magic on Earth. WEALTH currently has 800 members around the globe. It features:
- Three simple Foundational Practices (including the Alchemical Journal) that bind the community together on a forward-moving path
- a supervised initiatory Degree System based on the Tarot so members can receive public recognition for their confirmed advancement in the Hermetic arts
- a lively MightyNetworks private forum where coaches answer questions every weekday and other members respond all the time
- close to 100 facilitated virtual social events (of the hilarious, sexy and community-bonding sort) a month
- access to my most popular, life-changing courses (including LOVE and MONEY - more about these later)
.... plus invitations to mind-blowing live virtual workshops and practice sessions with me, Taia, trained Existential Kink coaches, and fascinating guest teachers.
WEALTH will re-open for application in September 2020.
The membership entails an initial 12-month commitment, with an investment of $99 a month -- less than the cost of a nice take-out dinner for 4.
... Programs with comparable levels of support and facilitation go for about $400 - $1000 a month... but I wanted WEALTH priced accessibly and scaled for many, many members...
... because I have vows to reach as many people as possible in order to initiate a world-wide shift in culture away from dogmatic materialism and towards magic and alchemy.
In recognition of the hardship many people are experiencing now, we also have a gifting program for WEALTH, so if you buy a membership for yourself, you can nominate a friend to receive a free membership (contingent on them passing through our application process).