Magic 101: Astral Accidents
Reminder: you cannot learn magic alone. You need someone to help you clean up after astral accidents and prevent you from getting into something you can’t clean up.
The astral or spiritual planes are not forgiving of ignorance. They are equally punishing of arrogance, impoliteness, entitlement, and poor manners. Vodou likes to teach in stories, and I’m often struck by how etiquette of the astral or spiritual planes is like the etiquette of fairy tales. The relationship isn’t exact, but if you read old fairy tales, you will be confronted by the neutrality to antipathy of various magical entities to you (and often to people in general.) There are surprisingly few spirits which are positive or helpful in their intentions toward you as a magician. It’s worth noting that the clever malicious or negative ones will deliberately be helpful… at first.
Also much like old fairy tales, the consequences of a seemingly minor interaction can be catastrophic. Spirits can and will test your ability to have respect and honor, as well as your ability to keep secrets and any other quality they deem necessary for you, and they will not announce their tests to you. You’ll just have a seemingly strange but transitory interaction which turns into serious consequences.
All of this is to say that you’re going to get in trouble at some point. There is no real learning involved in magic which does not involve serious consequences, and there is no ability to completely avoid a negative consequence. You just get better at avoiding the obvious problems or navigating their impact. A teacher ends up being someone who has made enough astral accidents to be able to help you.
A few things should be said: while you can earn a permanent consequence, the word permanent is a bit relative here and usually means “for the rest of this life.” Going through the death cycle washes most consequences off the magician. Generally, if the consequence is permanent, the magician has been warned, though it is possible with an egregious violation of respect and honor (and manners) to earn something nasty much more quickly. Human beings and spirits have very different understandings of respect and honor (and manners), so a teacher becomes a life, health, and sanity saving requirement while a magician learns just how different that understanding can be.
The teacher’s relationship to their spirits becomes vital here, because it is that relationship which the teacher will often be using to ask for clemency when their student does something especially stupid.
New magicians should also know that while there is a certain amount of difference between the astral or spiritual and physical planes, you can absolutely earn a physical problem because of a spiritual or astral accident.
Spirits can read intent fairly easily, but not having the intent to cause harm or offend does not prevent a negative consequence. It is generally assumed that if you’re intended to be a magician, you’re going to be willing and motivated to find a mentor or teacher and not be so arrogant as to try and become a magician without guidance. The capacity to be a magician and communicate with the spirits is inborn. The necessary technique, wisdom, and ability to build positive relationships (that is, the personal work necessary to have a positive relationship) is not. Having the intent to be respectful does not make up for being disrespectful, especially since people intended to be magicians are often steered specifically toward mentors or teachers to ensure that they have that oversight. Trying to teach yourself magic is a test of humility that a surprising number of people fail.
It should also be said that some astral accidents are not a product of arrogance, poor manners, and lack of respect and/or honor. Some astral accidents come directly from ignorance. Trusting the wrong spirit is an example of this. Because of the number of very clever malicious spirits out there which pretend to be beneficial, often called trickster spirits, at some point a new magician is going to trust the wrong one. One of the greater utilities of a teacher is removing what can only be called an infestation from the new magician and cleansing their life.
This is not something a magician can do for themselves. Malicious entities know you’re going to try and get rid of them and will often do everything in their power to prevent this, including hiding a magician’s capacities from them or ‘tying them up’ to prevent a magician from being able to use their capacities to help themselves. A teacher becomes an emergency physician for the new magician.
Finally, some astral accidents happen because a magician was not paying attention. Even very experienced magicians can miss a cue or a message, which can lead to negative consequences. New magicians can expect to actually receive very few of the messages aimed at them, as they learn what to pay attention to and how to understand the messages they’re getting. A teacher makes this a lot easier.
