So you've decided you want to do magic? Great, join the multitude. Human beings have been making magic for at least fifty thousand years, and probably much longer. The oldest cave paintings in which the ritual dances of shamans are depicted only date back around fifty millennia, so that's as far into the past as the actual physical evidence of magical practice extends, but in my opinion we could double this span of years and still not reach the roots of magic.

Before Mohammed met the angel Gabriel, before Jesus Christ was crucified, before Moses saw the burning bush, before the Mysteries of ancient Greece and Egypt were whispered in the temples, before the clay tables of Babylon were impressed with the names of demons, your ancestors worked magic to achieve their life goals and to protect themselves and their loved ones from misfortune. The practice of magic was universal. You either did it yourself, or you hired someone else with greater skill to do it for you. Everyone had their charms, their talismans, their signs and incantations, their mystic tattoos, their household gods, their familiar spirits, their sacred wells, their holy stone circles, their high places.

While the glaciers still covered most of the northern world with ice that was two miles thick, magic was being worked everywhere. And here's a little secret that not everyone is aware of: magic is still being worked today in every corner of the world. Magic hasn't changed and it hasn't gone away. What the shamans of your distant ancestors did around campfires in caves is still being done at this moment by their children's children's children on down through two thousand generations.

It's easy to learn how to do magic. Since the 1960s, it has become a popular fad across the Western world. Books, magazines, videos, clubs, and esoteric schools and societies are everywhere. You can't turn over a bush without uncovering another occult circle or witch coven. If you are one of the many who want to work magic, you'll find teachers and exalted masters, gurus and high adepts, lurking around everywhere, eager to instruct you, and usually for a not inconsiderable fee.

So go ahead, make your magic. What's stopping you?

Understanding and Doing Are Different Things
I'll tell you what's stopping you. When you try to work magic, you quickly discover that it's more than just drawing a circle on the ground, burning some incense, and muttering a few words from a book. The rituals, instruments, and incantations are only the outer shell of magic. They are useless unless they are infused with an inner fire, and that fire comes from you. It's not enough to prepare the robe, lamp, and altar for your works of magic; you must first prepare your mind.

Magic is like weightlifting. Others can tell you where to put your hands on the bar, how to bend your knees, how to arch your back, but they can't lift the weight for you. That takes physical training of your body to get your balance right, to build up your muscles, and to avoid hurting yourself. Magic requires mental training for the same reasons. Before you can work magic effectively, you need to strengthen your will and train your mind, and to some degree also your body, in essential skills such as visualization, concentration, breath control, and vocalization.

The number of books on the shelves that purport to teach you how to work magic are beyond counting, and grow more numerous by the day; but the number of books that teach you how to prepare your mind and body for working magic are very few. You might ask yourself, why is this so? Why are there so many how-to books that describe rituals and spells and charm-making, but so few books that teach you how to actually do those rituals, how to recite those spells, how to make those charms, so that they are effective? The answer is simple: it is easy to describe magic, but difficult to perform magic. Without prior conditioning of the mind, consistent results are impossible.

You might walk your way through a spell you find in a book, and get some positive result from it. That's called beginner's luck, and it definitely does happen. But without training, you won't be able to repeat your success. Consider basketball. Anyone can sink a basket from the three-point line once and a while. After all, the ball has to go somewhere, and eventually it will fall through the hoop. But without consistent practice and good technique, they won't be able to sink the basket when they really need to do it, and they won't sink the basket repeatedly on a consistent basis. One basket doesn't turn you into Michael Jordan. Beginner's luck doesn't make you a magician.

Before You Do Magic
What I've done in my book Before You Do Magic is to lay out sets of simple exercises for training your mind in the various skills you need to acquire before you can perform different aspects of magic successfully. These exercises develop your skills in magic automatically, in the same way lifting weights regularly will increase the size and strength of your muscles. In fact, your skills improve whether you want them to or not. There's no way to prevent them from improving, just as there is no way to prevent your muscles from getting larger when you work out in a gym. You can't do the exercises in the book without becoming a better and more powerful magician.

I've kept the exercises as brief and as simple as possible, for two reasons. First, everyone gets bored doing exercises of any kind, so I wanted to limit the boredom so that those doing the exercises would keep on doing them. Second, the greatest benefit to be gained from these exercises comes within the first few minutes of doing them. Grinding away for an hour while fighting your mental fatigue accomplishes nothing. Do each exercise for five or ten minutes, and you are done with it for the day.

The benefits gained from these exercises come with regular, daily practice. This is true of any exercise to develop a physical skill such as playing the violin, and it is equally so when developing the mental skills needed to work magic. The greatest and most rapid improvement results from short periods of intense concentration followed by complete relaxation. A half hour each day is more than enough to practice three or four exercises in my book. The exercises should be rotated on a regular schedule so that sets for building up different skills are practiced on successive days.

Before You Do Magic contains an abundance of exercises to work with, on the consideration that you are going to like some of them more than others. All the exercises are useful, and all of them are effective, but you won't enjoy all of them to an equal degree. Since there are so many exercises, you can pick and choose those that give the best results for you when developing a particular skill in magic.

Establishing a Link with Your Tutelary Spirit

The most important achievement in learning magic is to establish a working relationship with a tutelary spirit. This is a spiritual being who will guide you in your efforts to master various aspects of magic, and will teach you a personal system of magic that is unique to you. Every true magician has such a spirit mentor. The beginner is faced with a problem: how can a link with the tutelary spirit be formed before there is skill in working magic? Whole grimoires have been written teaching how to forge this connection, the most famous of which is the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage.

One very considerable advantage to the practice of the exercises in Before You Do Magic is that they open the mind to communications from spirits, including the personal tutelary spirit that every magician seeks. Without such communication true mastery of magic is impossible. Madame Blavatsky of Theosophy had her Mahatmas, Samuel MacGregor Mathers of the Golden Dawn had his Secret Chiefs, Aleister Crowley has his holy guardian angel Aiwass, and Dr. John Dee had his spirit guide Madimi, to name only a few of the more famous tutelary spirits.

The regular practice of the exercises in my book will cause the developing mind of the student to become clearly visible on the astral plane, perhaps for the first time. The astral plane is a general term for the non-physical realm where spirits dwell. When the mind begins to strengthen through the regular practice of the exercises, it begins to shine on the astral level like a beacon. It is a bit like lighting a lamp while walking across a field on a dark night. You immediately attract the notice of everything that happens to be in that field. In effect, you make the strident proclamation, "Here I am, a student of magic! Come and teach me!" And spirits will come, you can count on that. One of them will make a firmer connection with you than the others, who will drift away. The one who persists will become your spirit teacher.

Once you have established a link with your tutelary spirit, progress in magic becomes rapid and effortless. Your teacher knows what you need and when you need it. The spirit will guide your progress, and instruct you in a personal system of magic all your own. That is what the grimoires of Western occultism are: written records of systems of magic taught to magicians by their tutelary spirits. As effective as these systems may be in the hands of a trained magician, no system will ever be as potent as the one taught to you, and you alone, by your tutelary spirit. (Hence the vital importance of forging this bond.)

Even after you attain the communion and guidance of your personal spirit teacher, you will want to continue practicing the exercises in the book, because the skills in magic that you will have learned require regular use if their effectiveness is to be sustained. A body builder never stops lifting weights, but continues a workout routine to maintain the strength and size of his muscles. Similarly, magicians must never stops working on their occult skills if they want them to be available when they are needed.

Exercise of the Phantom Hand
In order to give you an idea of the kind of exercises in Before You Do Magic, I will compose an exercise for this essay similar to those in the book that are designed to teach the projection of astral forms. I'll name this exercise The Phantom Hand. It teaches how to extend an astral hand from the aura that surrounds your physical body. If you try this exercise out with a serious attitude, you may find that the results surprise you. Success can be achieved even by complete beginners, provided they are able to focus their attention and visualize clearly. (Both ot these skills, by the way, as well as many others, are taught in the book.)

You have probably noticed that when you stare hard at someone for an extended period of time, they will often turn their head and look directly at you, even though you are some distance away and have made no movement or sound that would attract attention to yourself. This illustrates the underlying connection between all human beings, a connection of which we are usually not consciously aware. It is the existence of this link on the level of the deep mind that allows this exercise to work.

The next time you are seated in a public gathering, such as an auditorium, a school room, a concert, or a movie theater, choose someone you don't know who is seated a few rows away from you. It is best if they are in front of you and have their head turned away. While gazing at the back of that person's head, shift your awareness to you right hand, which you should rest on your knee or on the arm of your chair. Become fully conscious of your hand without moving it or looking down at it.

With an act of will, lift up an astral double of your hand and arm, and extend your astral hand through the air toward the person you are looking at. Your astral form is elastic and will stretch a long distance, as the elasticity of the silver cord of astral projection illustrates. Do not move your physical hand at all, but separate an invisible astral double of your right hand from it and stretch it toward the person. This requires a division of your mind, which holds an awareness of your physical hand in the background, but simultaneously has most of its attention on your astral hand.

Gently tickle one of the ears of the person you are looking at with your extended astral fingers. The trick to success in this exercise is to convince yourself that you are actually touching the person's ear, and feeling it with your fingers. You do not need to strain your eyes, or any part of your body, while doing this exercise, but your mental focus must be intense on your projected astral hand. Imagine that it is actually your real hand. You must put away the notion that you are playing a game, or just pretending. The astral hand must be real to you, and the feeling of the person's ear against your fingertips must be real in your mind.

It is very likely that the person will reach up and rub their ear. If you do this exercise rightly, they will always touch their ear. They may also turn around and stare directly at you, because they will sense the intensity of your concentration upon them. If they look at you, merely drop your gaze or look to the side. You should be without emotion during this exercise—it is not necessary to work up your feelings. Your mind should be passive the whole time, but your concentration and the focus of your will must be intense.

A word of caution: never do anything malicious with your phantom hand, such as pinching someone or slapping their face. It is perfectly possible to do these things, but when you project malice through the astral plane, it will be reflected back at you in unpleasant ways. For example, the person struck may suddenly develop a strong dislike for you and may pick a fight with you, even though they have no idea why they are angry with you. The Wiccan rule of threefold return applies here.