Recent in-depth, intensive spiritual initiatory work prompted me to write this article. Some valuable insight came from this extensive personal inner work, dreams, divination (mostly tarot and geomancy) and observation. This might resonate with some and upset others.
Today’s spiritual seeker is offered a version of magic that prioritises emotional relief over divine authority, wrapped in a watered-down mix of religious and New Age clichés, and unresolved childhood trauma.
Real inner work that burns rather than soothes rarely gets airtime. But when it does, it tends to upset the comfortable and shake the spiritually sedated, which is the point. This piece emerges from that flame, and it doesn’t ask for permission or approval.
In an age where spiritual practice is often mistaken for a method to fix our lives, jobs, relationships, or broken appliances, it is essential to reclaim the original, radiant core of magic – true inner transformation and alignment through command and divine fire.
True magic, as taught in Hermetic and Western esoteric traditions, is not a spiritual performance designed to win favour with invisible beings. This path has nothing to do with begging, pleading, blind faith or desperate devotion dressed up as feeling “loved” or less alone. There is no supplication here, no hollow vessel theory pushed by devotional cults.
Real magic is divine will in action, shaped through conscious intent, fuelled by inner fire, strengthened by discipline, and anchored in sacred authority. Often, it is born from trauma and pain, the buried shadow we resist until forced to confront and integrate it, rather than repeat the same cycles without ever touching real spiritual growth. The only problem with this version of the path of fire is that it burns instead of stroking the ego.
Magic is Dominion and Fire
The great grimoires, from the Key of Solomon to the Picatrix, teach that the magician is not a passive recipient of mystical experience. The magician is a ruler of forces, a master of correspondences, and a sovereign who speaks the names of power with intentional clarity. When the magician acts, they are not asking for favours. They are commanding co-creators of the universe not supplicants to unseen forces.
“The soul of the sage, inflamed by spiritual fire, commands the heavens.”
Picatrix
The Picatrix, Book 1, Chapter Seven highlights the transformative power of that inner fire. When a sage’s soul is inflamed by spiritual fire, they cease being a seeker and become an active conduit for celestial energy. This inner fire is kindled through rigorous purification, involving ritual, meditation, and shadow work, which brings the soul into harmonious alignment with universal forces.
Once this spark is ignited, the magician’s consciousness is no longer passive. It is attuned to the light from which consciousness proceeds. It becomes a primal radiance that transcends matter and thought. In that state, the soul does not beg, it commands. It speaks names of power, channels astral currents and shapes the heavens with sovereign will. This sovereignty is not driven by ego but rather reflects a deeper unity with the cosmic order.
Submission and possession
Religious traditions based on submission or possession (sometimes called mounting), such as Vodoun or Umbanda, often rely on spirit possession, where the practitioner becomes a vehicle for a spirit. The same thing could be said for psychic traditions where a medium was supposed to give themselves over to their guide so that the dead could speak through them.
This is frequently confused with magic, but it’s closer to mediumship or religious ecstasy. Spiritual contact is defined as the loss of control. The practitioner becomes a vessel through which a force can speak or act. There is no sovereignty here; practitioners must have faith in their spirits and loan them their bodies.
However, a magician is not a “servant,” a vessel for spirits, or a spiritual Airbnb for whatever wants to pop in. They are a reborn demiurge, reshaping reality with spiritual light. Hermeticism and the Western magical tradition say: you never lose control. The moment you do, you are no longer a magician but someone (or something) else’s altar.
While these practices have their place in religious or communal experience, they do not equate to Hermetic magic, which seeks integration with the divine, not displacement by it. Gods and spirits are something to be respected, to work with. You can’t surrender blindly or allow them to take over. By doing so you are no different from any other devotee appealing to a deity, believing they’re superior simply because they promise to grant wishes, and then calling it “spiritual alignment.”
Not submitting doesn’t mean you can’t receive messages, dreams, guidance, or psychic insight. On the contrary, not only is this entirely possible and natural, but gods and spirits want you to be active in your spiritual practice, not a passive vessel.
The hollow safety of submission: why some seek power by surrendering it
Not all who claim the title of magician seek transformation. Some are simply fugitives, not from society, but from themselves. Drawn to ritual for its glamour, to hierarchy for its false sense of identity, these individuals find comfort in systems that demand obedience rather than awakening.
They join orders, circles, covens, or cults that promise power, but only in exchange for their will, surrendered through obedience and unconditional devotion. There are rules to obey, spirits to placate, and surface-level sacrifices like abstaining from wine, cakes, or biscuits for a time (as if true spirits care). Offerings must be brand-specific, not as symbolic acts, but as if the spirits had human preferences. Yet, the real offering being demanded here isn’t the wine, but members’ sovereignty.
Why does this happen?
For many, it begins with emotional numbness. A sense that something is missing. This void attracts the trappings of mysticism like a moth to candlelight, weak minds, possibly inexperienced, naïve or those in denial or unable to recognise the difference between a true path and a charade. The structure gives the illusion of purpose. The rituals give a sense of belonging. The group provides shallow validation, and that’s enough to keep them there.
But underneath the surface is a wound. It is a fear of letting go. It is an inability to form real spiritual bonds, which requires shedding masks. These are carefully constructed personas, shaped by a lifetime of family and social conditioning, and mistakenly believed it was their own choice.
These individuals are not seeking union with the divine. They are seeking refuge from their soul. And what better way to avoid inner confrontation than to submit to a system that does all the thinking for them?
There is often a deep psychic split at work, a refusal to choose, to commit, to step fully into one’s power. Rather than resolve that inner conflict through shadow work, they defer choice entirely. They might say “Let the spirits guide me,” when in truth, they mean “Let someone else take responsibility.”
The trauma could lie in past mundane or spiritual relationships or initiations that have left them shell-shocked on a soul level. And so, they build walls instead of processing the trauma. They confuse surrender with safety. They trade initiation for incarceration.
But true magic is never submissive.
It is an act of divine rebellion, of standing tall before the cosmos and saying: “I am.” It demands courage, fire and confrontation and a kind of sacred non-ego-based arrogance that refuses to bow to anything but truth.
The magician who seeks comfort and external recognition is not a magician, but a follower. Only when the inner split is faced can real power rise. Until then, all their spells, spirits, “sacrifices” will be nothing, but a surface-level masquerade rather than a deep, true spiritual practice.
What I’ve observed in some groups is that the egregore often becomes driven more by human ego and self-importance than by genuine spiritual connection. The “power” they believe they possess does not come from the invoked spirits but is a low-level astral construct generated by the egregore itself; essentially a lower daemon capable of producing minor results. These small outcomes are used as psychological manipulation to convince members that their practices are effective.
This appearance of power often masks a deeper dynamic of psychic and spiritual entanglement. The internal mechanisms, such as belief, identity fusion, altered states, and collective reinforcement, can be real and dangerous.
The excess theatricality serves to entrain the mind, the need to prove their righteousness, creating a symbolic ecosystem that keeps the participants locked in. For those inside, this is real, sacred, and emotionally binding.
This makes psychological and spiritual disengagement harder because the group becomes a family, with codes, secrets, punishments, and rewards.
In such groups “magic” becomes a shambling spectacle dressed in ritual and noise, designed to impress but lacking any true force. When the magician cedes their will, whether to spirits, tradition or emotional theatrics, they become a performer, not a practitioner. The gestures may be elaborate, the words ancient, but without inner authority, they are empty mechanics.
Sovereignty is the foundation on which all genuine magical work rests. It is what separates transformation from performance and purpose from pantomime. Without it, the magician is not working with power but mimicking its forms.
The hermetic path is a path of fire
In the Corpus Hermeticum, humanity is portrayed as a being of twofold nature: mortal in body yet immortal in essence, carrying within the spark of divine intellect known as Nous. In Poimandres, the text states, “You are a mortal god, destined to die, yet immortal in your essence, for you are both mortal and divine.” This is not poetic embellishment, but a declaration of human potential drawn from the same creative fire that sustains the cosmos.
In his Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa warns against superstition, blind worship, and spiritual passivity. The magician must be bold, fearless, and committed to truth. Every ritual, every invocation, must be entered as a conscious collaboration with the divine, not a plea from the powerless.
Why this distinction matters
Those who surrender their will to external forces lose their power and direction. When you submit to spirits, you abandon the rightful divine throne of the soul. The magician’s path is the path of command, not out of arrogance, but because the divine spark within demands it. To reclaim our true nature, and master these techniques, we must confront our inner shadow and unresolved conflict. Once we stop lying to ourselves, the path of fire reveals itself. This doesn’t mean disrespecting the forces we work with, it means honouring and integrating them as archetypal parts of the one thing.
Genuine connection with spirits, gods, angels, daemons or cosmic forces is not attained by begging. It is earned through embracing our true selves, discipline, not out of fear of displeasing these forces, but as a natural expression of integrity, alignment, and the awakening of the logos, the creative Word.
True magicians stand with clear eyes in the storm and direct the flame. That inner fire does not bow.
If you want to be moved like a puppet, passive devotion and possession will suffice. But moving the stars requires boldness and willingness.
True magic is not about love and light, or bending the rules based on what feels more soothing or safe, it’s about taking responsibility and a long and difficult de-structuring process to find out what’s underneath. That requires true inner mastery, the kind forged in pain, and the refusal to flinch when the soul demands truth over comfort.
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