Cover detail from author’s forthcoming Practical Magick

Magick for Non-Believers

If a thing works, who cares what the world thinks?

Mitch Horowitz
11 min readAug 15, 2024

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What’s real in life is what works.

In that vein, this article supplies three methods in magick and personal development that require no belief in the metaphysical. What’s more, these tools function as accelerants: by which I mean practices that prove immediately workable and effective amid the storms of life.

I define magick — which I spell in early modern English to distinguish it from stagecraft — as causative ritual. This essay offers three rites that fit this criteria, each one simple and inviting of personal experiment.

I am sufficiently confident to insist that these three practices will net positive results in your life, possibly within 24 hours. That may sound audacious or salesman-like. I don’t care. I submit my claim to the proof of your private results.

I call my personal system (or anti-system), anarchic magick. It’s a free-form magickal practice, so much so that there’s no need to use my term. I believe that some doorways in life must discard fee of entry regarding belief, label, or orthodoxy. Hence, querents who approach these exercises needn’t agree with me about the verity of extra-physicality (my definition of spirituality) in order to use and benefit from them.

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Mitch Horowitz
Mitch Horowitz

Written by Mitch Horowitz

"Treats esoteric ideas & movements with an even-handed intellectual studiousness"-Washington Post | PEN Award-winning historian | Censored in China

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