What Is The Goal of Magick and Spirituality?

Recently, a fellow Druid posed a question to me: What is the ‘aim’ or ‘goal’ in magick/spirituality/mysticism? I found that to be an intriguing question. On one hand, we often work with magick and spirituality as if we have an aim or goal in mind, but other times it may seem lost on us completely. So, then, what is the goal?

The Reason

Perhaps it’s best that we first look at the reason why we pursue our spirituality or magick to begin with. Most of the time, we become involved with our spirituality as a means to understand ourselves in relation to the rest of reality. Perhaps we even want to seek out what reality actually is. We want to know what the meaning or purpose of our lives is.

For a great many people, it is much easier to ignore the subjective experiences of life and be guided by what can be seen and understood objectively. I like to call this the ‘Realist Paradigm’. A paradigm is a worldview — a way of seeing the world. Think of a paradigm like a certain color shade of sunglasses. When you put on green-tinted sunglasses, your world you see is colored by those glasses. Just the same, when you see the world through the ‘Realist Paradigm’, you’re only taking in what your five objective senses can detect and you base your life decisions on that information.

But, for those of us who live in a paradigm I like to call the ‘Mystical Paradigm’ (I know, I’m quite original), we see the the world as being much more than what we can see, taste, smell, feel, and hear. There us an ultimate meaning that lives just below the surface of all we can objectively experience, and we want to tap into it. Why? Well, maybe we want to improve our happiness or try to come to terms with the relationship between life and death.

The Benefits

I remember when I was working for a local hospital and my supervisor was going through a rough time with the place. As with many workplaces, politics play a huge role in how the days and weeks play out for you, and so you have to dance the dance. That’s life. In this instance, someone had framed my supervisor for an act he hadn’t committed, which led to his suspension and put him at risk of termination. For anyone who knows me, it doesn’t sit well with me when those things happen to people who don’t deserve it. So, I decided to work a spell for the revelation of truth in my workplace. It wasn’t a direct spell involving any named person, it was quite a generalized spell. Within a week, truth was revealed and my supervisor kept his job.

In this case, the benefit was justice. However, it was also gratifying to see something play out in your favor. Was it the magick? Well, I probably won’t ever know. But in either case, my short-term intent for the spell came to fruition and it gave me a really good feeling. That’s good, right?

The Goal of Magick and Spirituality

So, it seems the heart of our magickal and spiritual quest is twofold: to uncover our truest self in the grand tapestry of existence and to come to peace with the great cycle of life and death. It’s like we’re all explorers in this vast, mystic forest, seeking out paths that will reveal the secrets of the universe and our souls. Each spell cast, each moment of introspection, is a step toward understanding the Divine as we perceive it and finding our place in its narrative.

As we walk this path, it’s like weaving our own story into the cosmic plot, where the fear of the final chapter is met with a quest for a meaning that hopefully extends beyond it.

So, I leave you with this nugget to ponder:

If we’re stitching our lives into the universe’s grand design, how do we know which threads truly matter in the end?