Dialectical Metaphor

There is a double-frustration in the practice of magic, a rock and a hard place.

The rock is this: there is a certain minimum level that a magical result needs to hit to really consider a spell or a ritual to be something that "worked." Below that level of result, you are down in the noise of everyday mystery- the random fluctuation of situations and events.

To charge a sigil, release it into the world, and feel, later, that it did it's job, one must expect results, and catalog those results. This, if for no other reason, is why many occultists insist that a strong magical practice includes the keeping of a magical journal in which to record praxis and payoff, a sort of objective catalog of which things worked and which things didn't.

But one must also not get bogged down in such details, and that is the hard place. To practice magic, fundamentally, is to open yourself up to the possibility of grand things. You dabble not with just a single fire, but with the entire elemental idea of fire. Cosmic winds sweep through your body, coalescing upon your magical instruments and shooting out into the world. You must act inside the realm of gods and spirits and the shooting, sparking planets that whirl endlessly across the sky.

One must be the tallest man (or woman), with the broadest shoulders, to bridge these two needs. To keep one's head in the sky and feet on the ground is to be a giant, a great huge curtain of  a creature, Mr. Fantastic and Atlas combined.

It is hard to hold two things in one's heart, but the magician must do it. She must think boldly, as if the marshaled forces of Eternity stand with her, and everything comes naturally and easily. But she must work as if all stand against her, as if magic didn't work and she was alone in the universe. She must be strong enough to work through the times that it seems as if she is alone, even if she is not, but bold enough to seize synchronicity when it flies past.