“You just fold it in.”
by Christopher Penczak, edited by Tina Whittle
“I blow cinnamon through my front door the first of every month, but nothing happens. I don’t have any more money. This magic stuff is bullshit.”
This statement was shared with me by a client struggling with prosperity who sees online videos as the best resource for magickal education. And I’ll admit there are some fun and even good things online, but they often neglect the bigger picture. With context, the TikTok advice could be helpful. Without it, not so much.
The act of blowing cinnamon won’t bring prosperity despite cinnamon’s correspondence with Jupiter, the planet of prosperity and good fortune. Blowing cinnamon with the intention is a bit better. Some teach intention is everything, and while it certainly is a key ingredient, every recipe needs more than a key ingredient. If you make chicken soup with chicken, the key ingredient, but don’t have water or anything else, it’s not going to be chicken soup no matter how much chicken you have or how strong your intention is.
If you follow a recipe that is detailed enough, you might just get it. And if you follow a spell precisely you’ll often get it to work too. A good spell will have all the parts built into it. It will have clear intention or a place for you to clarify your personal intention. It will have the means in which to raise and direct energy even if it’s subtle. Most spells will connect you to the web of correspondences. Some will inherently connect you to a divine power and wisdom or open you to sacred space and contraction. Not all spells do all these things
Many will omit things in the same way that some recipes will share less-than-precise details, assuming you know the basics. Lack of knowledge of techniques or terminology can make a mess of things. I remember the line in the show Schitt’s Creek where the characters David and Moira Rose, both inept in the kitchen, follow a recipe with the instruction to “fold in the cheese” and neither understanding. Many would not know that “folding in” means to gently sweep from the bottom repeatedly as you add a little bit of cheese in each motion, done in delicate mixtures to get a certain texture.
In magick, if enough people do something successfully, like blessing a home with prosperity by blowing cinnamon, you might be able to tap into that, but you might not. Often something specific is needed, like the same prayer, so you can get synched with the momentum of the past. Without it, you are just sprinkling spices with no effect. A misunderstanding of this makes magick seem much more haphazard than it is and contributes to the idea that it’s simply superstition.
Then there is learning to cook. Through practice you gain skill. Someone can follow a recipe to a T, but without experience and skill, the success rate is not the same as a person with experience and deeper understanding. A person with that experience can then improvise, adapt, and create new things. Magick is like that but today many people start at the adapting-and-improvising stage before ever learning to cook, and then teach others to do the same, often perpetuating some glaring misinformation.
In magick, the practice of regularly deeply connecting with yourself, your inner powers, and the land and your otherworldly allies; cultivating stillness and intuition; and immersing yourself in seasonal and stellar rhythms bring magick into everything you do.
Soon everything you do has magickal effect. I remember a mentor telling me that a regular person moving a rock from the left side of a path to the right had no effect, but a person who is magickally trained, following inner guidance can shift all the world by moving that rock, as they are pulling on the strands of connections interweaving all things. That rock becomes like the shuttle of the loom of fate in that place and time. Your effect might not be visible to yourself, but your action has affected the energy and spirits of that place for times to come. You realize you learn magick, you do magick, and you become magick, all of your life a spell devoted to your soul’s purpose. Then when you are called to blow cinnamon through a doorway, you invoke the full force of prosperity and good fortune in that place.