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The Importance of Discipline in Magical Practice

© Taylor Ellwood

The importance of discipline in magic practice is something which is often ignored or at best vaguely hinted in books on magic. When we think of discipline, we can think of it in two ways, as either a virtue or a field of study. My focus in this article is on discipline as a virtue to magical practice. But in thinking of discipline as a virtue to magic practice I'm not focusing on, say, the discipline of doing magic daily or exercising daily, though surely these activities can contribute to being disciplined. Certainly as well, many a magician I know could stand to be much more disciplined in terms of practicing magic daily and exercising daily. But what I refer to as discipline goes beyond doing daily activities.

I define discipline as a virtue and specifically the virtue of being able to control yourself. This is a virtue that many people never master. More often these days we see people who are slaves to their passions and lusts. I have to admit that I have not been as disciplined in living my life as I would like to be.

Beyond being a virtue of being able to control yourself, discipline is also about learning to respect the rules and boundaries of others, though sometimes discipline can also be about breaking rules and boundaries. It takes discipline to respect the rules and boundaries of other people, as well as respecting rules in a workplace or other form of institution. By learning that sometimes we need to hold back, to consider carefully if what we want is really worth breaking the rules, we discipline ourselves. We focus not on the desire, but on the process to realize the desire.

The process to realize the desire is essential to disciplining yourself. By learning how something occurs, why it occurs, and what can be done to make it occur, we learn the fundamental dynamics of the process and can use that process to work with a situation to manifest the desire we seek. However, as I have often found in magical practice, there are many magicians who don't understand the process and think that the only concern that matters is the result. And yet, in the end, the result doesn't matter if you can't produce it every time you need it. What matters is that you understand the dynamics and you discipline yourself to perform those dynamics to get what you need.

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