Magical Research Tips

chaosjelly:

This is a post to help streamline the search for decent info during your metaphysical studies. Note that this post is a collection of tips and for the most part is not in any chronological order. 

What type of resource should I go for?

I. If you’re looking for: How to do it, Reading about someone’s own personal magic experience, A perspective from the magical side, go for magical books written by magical people

II. If you’re looking for: possible evidence of how it works in the physical world, analyzing a practice from a non-magical standpoint: non-magical sources written by non-magical people

What sources/subjects for what? (For point II above)  

• Anthropology sources/databases will serve you better than magic books, when researching for traditions/culture-specific paths. They’re less likely to bastardize/butcher things past a certain time period.
• Theological books will serve you better than some traditional religion/practice books.
• Scientific, Medical,  and Psychological sources/databases will serve you better than healing books.

Why not magic books for proof, analyzation, or history?

Magic books WILL cherry pick evidence and case studies/experiments. And often, these experiments will be severely outdated (from the 1900’s), and they will have a meager amount of them; maybe 5 experiments throughout the entire book, while compared to the at least 10-20 of a typical scientific journal. And of course, these 5 experiments will be used as the Ultimate Proof, instead of treated like the coincidental evidence they are.

Their explanations of how the magic/practice works in this physical realm will be “because it’s magic!!”, instead of in science/medical journals where you will get actual possible scientific/notable psychological bases behind it such as neuroplasticity, the applied placebo effect, the impact of human willpower, etc.

As for analyzation….lmao literally what magic books written by a magical person have good analysis. Sarcastic tone aside, I mean this in a legitimate matter; most magical books focus on the practice itself rather than an analyzation of that practice.

As for anthropological books versus magic books, this is because most magic books will not get the history and other anthropological information correct. They do not provide a good scope of the whole of the culture or the history, and there may be a bit of bastardization as well.

When looking for case studies/experiments, these phrases are your friends:

• Randomized controlled trial
• Double blind
• Also check how many times the experiment was cited in others’ experiments/research. Being cited more times, and even continuing to be cited several years into the future shows an excellent experiment with results that are trusted. 
• For further research into who exactly conducted the experiment, pay attention to the order of the names. Usually the ones listed first will be those who did the most work on the research. 

Doing the Research:

When searching, databases with full text will be your friend. Full-text is when a database has the entire copy of a source or portion of a source, rather than only a summary or the abstract. There will often be a checkmark box in the advanced search to show only full-text options.

Reference books/encyclopedias for the most part actually suck ass (sorry britannica); information is usually shallow and not well-researched. At best it could be used to find other sources of information to look at, as they will list the citations.

!!PLEASE DO NOT REUPLOAD THE FULL TEXT TO PUBLIC WEBSITES!! This is why most databases aren’t free; to protect against people pirating.

If you want FREE:

PUBLIC LIBRARIES: Public libraries are your FRIEND. They are public for a reason! Most public libraries in the US will let you get a library card at no cost at all. Borrowing books costs nothing as long as you return them on time. Also, public libraries often have access to databases that do expect you to pay, and provide that database info for free! And to top it off with a touch of morality brownie points, libraries help to support many rising authors as they are often how many previously obscure books break the ice.

University/Academic Libraries: Many universities provide their library services to the public. Like public libraries, they will often have access to the paid databases provided for free! It is usually based on the university’s wi-fi so you shouldn’t need to create an account. Academic libraries also often have a large reference staff on hand; the job of reference staff is to provide research assistance to people and be specialized in a certain subject of information. Meaning, you can totally hit them up for an interview to ask questions about the subject, and/or for research help!

Make friends with students (especially graduate students), professors, or researchers of the subject you want to look into: That’s what friends are for! There’s a good chance they may have had to write a paper (or MANY) on the subject you’re looking into. Even if not, they could point you towards better sources. 

Not all sources are made equal:

Some sources fucking suck; they’re inaccurate, don’t have the best wording, aren’t too well researched, or they’re just plain wrong. It’s going to be hard to judge sources when you’re just getting started in your research, but the more you know, the quicker you’ll be able to spot bullshit. Note that you’re going to waste a lot of time initially reading something you later found out was bullshit; that’s okay! Finding out something previous that you read was bullshit shows that you are learning. Plus, as you get a better grasp of what sources are shit and what’s not, you’ll be able to decrease that “wasted time” by a lot- so, it pays to be selective. Of course you should take everything in metaphysical stuff with a grain of salt, but if you’re taking everything as grains of salt, then how do you know which sources are better? The answer is experience and continued research.

Some sources can also be good for certain things, and terrible for others- even though they are both written about in equal measures. Take that into consideration when analyzing a source- perhaps their information on working with fae and other nature spirits is absolutely solid! However, perhaps their information/views on harm by large spirits such as deities, etc, or their views on mundane magic (such as employment spells) is rather…absolutely terrible.

Also. Sometimes you’ll think someone’s the absolute best when you start out in your craft. Hell, they may even be someone who inspired your practice at the beginning. But maybe you’ll come back a few years later, with experience under your belt and realize…they were actually shit the entire time. Hey, it happens. But remember that it shows you’re growing.

Signs of a shit source:

• Few/no citations for something that is obviously not their personal practice or something they are the creator of
• Author is extremely opinionated but tries to pass their opinions as fact with no sources or poor arguments
• For healing magic books, trying to tell you that it’s totally okay to not go to the doctor/therapist, and/or that magic can absolutely replace legit medical assistance or therapy. Or, the author makes outlandish claims such as “I was able to cure someone’s celiac disease (a chronic disease) through my healing touch practice.”
• Words that say nothing (and it’s not because of scholarly grammar); signs of this: you read a paragraph like 3 times and nothing sticks, or it doesn’t make sense.
• Any form of “you shouldn’t have to X for Y result because I don’t have to X” that is written in a factual/”all people should” tone instead of in a tone reflective of or an article specifically about personal experience
• At first something sounds nice, but then think on what the author said, and you go “???” or “sure jan.” Example of this plus the above bullet: “With money spells, everyone puts too much focus on sending out job applications. I don’t think that’s necessary, I’m such a good and wanted employee that employers are literally calling me to ask if I want to work for them!”

Tone matters. While not always, tone can be indicative as quality in certain ways.

• Arrogant with no backing tone; the author keeps jacking off to themself- they keep building up how “complex” and “difficult” their Uneeq practice is and then it ends up being something low-level like sending energy
• It’s a baby-ish tone that focuses on hurt feelings. Example: I saw some post saying how “we shouldn’t use the term UPG because it leads to hurt feelings.” Uh, no. It’s the inability to handle the disagreement often associated with the term UPG that leads to hurt feelings, not the term UPG itself like lmao grow up, with people like that it doesn’t matter what term you use, disagreement will hurt their feelings anyways  
• Complains about “over-intellectualizing” in certain ways; tone of this type often disagree about UPG for stupid (not automatically mutually exclusive) reasons. I will write a post about Stupid Reasons UPG Conflicts in the future, but I’ll provide you with a short example for now: Person A: Ummm Spirit Species X looks blue to my. Person B: Uh no they look red!! That means you can’t be working with the same spirit species! (They continue to argue). Actual reason behind it: Spirit Species X has multiple races/ethnicities and countries of origin on their plane, and both individuals jumped to hasty conclusions about the entire race based on the One (1) individual they worked with.

Some examples of shit magic books (with explanations as to why, of course):

• The Chaos Protocols by Gordon White – A long, long explanation that I could still add on even more here. Fits the first two bullets under “signs of a shit source”.
• DJ Conway’s books:
• Explanation 1
• Explanation 2

Saving Time: You don’t have to read a book/article cover to cover.

You don’t have to. You don’t. Unless the information is extremely cumulative (such as in storybooks), you will almost never have to read the entire book/article. Nonfiction books are generally well-sorted into sections by topic, so as long as you know the general information of the topic you can absolutely skip around and get only what you need.

About Topics

Topics that have little to no historical resources/traditions (if any at all):

• Energy work of anything besides humans
• Energy work in general that goes beyond “meditate!! Energy balls!”
• Energy systems of spirits
• Energy Signatures
• Energy parasites (as in spiritual energy parasites)
• Classifications of energy elements that go beyond the main four (5 if you include “spirit)
• Discernment of types of spirits from one another (Note: you’ll likely just find a LOT of ableism and misogyny, especially in texts concerning differentiating angelic possessions versus “demonic”)
• Discernment/vetting of spirits in general
• Any spirits that aren’t already established in lore
• Astral travel (the non golden standard that most people use today)
• Actual anthropology of spirits (what their culture is like, what languages they speak, how their children are raised, etc); at best you will find only their mythologies, which represent only a minor portion of the spirit’s population or a single individual that is commonly mistaken for a whole species (The One(1) Minotaur  in Greek myth)  
• Differentiating between varying levels of astral planes
• Differentiating between energy system layers (and how they may relate to astral planes)
• How humans can be shards/facets of large spirits such as deities, archangels, etc
• Ways to repel/defend against Large Spirits that are harming you where the human(s) actually win (so NOT giving them offerings so they leave you alone, which was a trend for more merciless deities)
• Biases/Perceptual filters, Discernment/Judgement in general
• Energetic/Psychic Vampires (as in humans who are dependent on outside magical energy intake; NOT the spiritual species)
• Eldritch spirits (actual working Info about the spirits besides lore)
• Energetic Source wells (as in,those “ultimate”, apparently endless sources of energy)

So for these topics, you will likely be doing most of the writing/discovering yourself; these topics have little to no, if any at all, historical books for them.

Topics that have history but are rarely spoken in-depth (specifics given), or much in-depth knowledge has been lost:

• Correspondences (such as herbs, crystals, etc)
• Sex magic

Topics that are commonly spoken about but have much contradicting information:

• Human energy systems (tip: ime people can have diff energy systems)

Topics that you’ll need to sift through fluffy, incorrect, shallow information, or extremist views for:

• Anything involving angels
• Chakras
• Reiki
• Any sort of “healing touch” practice
• Empath/Empathic Abilities; also little to no info for how it works energy work wise 
• How crystals work energy-work wise
• Any sort of demonic spirit work (most demon workers vary from extremely fearful/hating of them or revering them as wholly benevolent)
• Ars Goetia/Lesser Key of Solomon (in addition to above point, there are some views claiming Every Single One Is Actually Secretly A Deity which…I have opinions on in here)

Topics that are generally oral-tradition, secretive, closed in some form, or people are just overall not willing to disclose:

• Soul retrieval
• Energy work for the soul
• Most forms of shamanism
• Most indigenous traditions
• Traditional witchcraft (though note some sects are more open than others)
• Spiritual Conjuration (as in calling for a specific spirit with a billion protections/filters to make sure you get the right one)
• Hereditary Witchcraft
• Hedge Witchcraft
• Feri traditional witchcraft
• Clan of Tubal Cain aka Cochrane tradition of witchcraft

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Current Post Version: 21 December 2017

As with all of my posts, please check the permalink for the most updated version as I do regularly come back and make additions/edits.