If all real magick is, is simply using our willpower and intent to influence change in our environments, in our internal states, or in anything at all in this world, one thing that has always baffled me is why super religious folks don’t realize that with their will, intent, emotion, focus, and use of their mind in general, they are actively practicing magick to shape their reality, all according to their beliefs, desires, and convictions—whether that’s an internal psychospiritual restructuring of their perception of reality or an external manifestation within the collective energetic field they consciously or unconsciously contribute to. Don’t they realize that they channel energy, emotion, focus, and intention through the same universal mechanisms of creation that others do, yet because of their own lack of education, metaphysical understanding, or psychospiritual discernment, they remain convinced that their practice of magick is divinely sanctioned while anything outside of their rigid framework of belief is heretical, evil, or forbidden—never seeing that they are operating from the same esoteric core principle that everything outside of their limited comprehension also operates under, which is consciousness being able to affect and shape the architecture of reality itself, no matter if it’s an internal reconfiguration, transmutation, or reorientation of awareness, feeling, and perception within, or an external alteration of physical reality itself through the use of will, focused energy, and directed intention.

When we take a closer look at the underlying psychological aspects of those who are deeply religious or psychospiritually underdeveloped—just as we may have once been before an inner shift of awakening began to unfold within us, leading us to take our own journeys of conscious development seriously—we can see, from a higher state of awareness, that they are operating from a split psyche or a divided mind. This means that their religion has literally caused them to compartmentalize their consciousness, creating a fragmentation of awareness that prevents them from perceiving that they are engaging in the very same energetic and metaphysical processes that they claim to condemn. So, this fragmentation—this split in consciousness—it allows them to call magick evil, label it as demonic, and think of themselves as the only ones who can be righteous, the only ones that can truly serve or represent divine will, or the only ones that can bring “good” into this world, all while simultaneously practicing the same principles of energetic influence, manifestation, and will-based creation they demonize—most commonly expressed in their devotion through prayer, worship, intercession, prophetic declaration, or any kind of individual or collective energetic alignment of will and intent through their faith-based practices and spiritual exertions in general. Because in their minds—minds that have been fractured by dogmatic programming, fear-based conditioning, and unexamined belief structures—what they do is holy, spiritually exclusive, and divinely privileged simply because it exists within their own enclosed energetic ecosystem of belief and perception. Yet in truth, they are practicing magick, energy manipulation, and the manifestation of thought, emotion, will, and intent into form, which basically every belief system, social order, and human endeavor in this world runs on—things within their own religious framework that have all merely been repackaged and socially sanctified through the linguistic and psychological veil of their religion.

This of course doesn’t mean that when they practice magick through their religious frameworks, that it means they are using that magick for truly benevolent reasons or purposes. While there can be a lot of good that can come from having a sincere faith and the genuine desire to transform, connect with something higher, or find a sense of belonging within a communal structure, because of the split in consciousness that religion often causes within individuals and collectives of religious believers, they are unable to perceive their own hypocrisies, contradictions, or the ways they act out their unresolved inner dysfunction through the systems, relationships, and structures they participate in—where, due to their own unexamined shadow material and lack of self-awareness, they operate in spiritual blindness, psychological inversions, and institutionalized ethical distortions. This is all carried out under the guise of devotion and justified by their need for overbearing control and institutionalized enforcement of conformity to their hierarchies, doctrines, and unexamined dogmas. And just to clarify, their morality in this state of spiritual fragmentation has nothing to do with genuine ethics, justice, inner transformation, or the elevation of consciousness—it’s more about maintaining absolute control over others for them. And they do all of this while expecting the people who have some sense about them—even those within their own congregations or communities who have begun to awaken to the deeper layers of awareness regarding the darker realities that can exist within their own religion and the people in it—to quietly endure their dysfunction and spiritual immaturity.

This means that they cannot see that just because they think they are operating from righteousness through their faith (where a lack of inner transformation endures because they’ve traded true inner development for external validation through religious performance and blind conformity, where trying to absolutely control others becomes more important than cultivating their own processes of psychological maturation and inner refinement), it does not mean that they are not aligned with the darker energetic undercurrents of their religion or even with the universal undercurrents of darkness that span throughout the totality of reality in general—where their will and intent are actually baneful in nature toward others, instead of authentically guided by integrity, higher ethical awareness, and conscious moral responsibility. In fact, their deeply ingrained and unexamined sense of moral elevation and ethical entitlement—which creates a self-reinforcing and collective delusion of righteousness—it often blinds them to the shadow frequencies within their own actions, the actual operations of their own mind, and the broader psychospiritual pathology of their religion as a whole. And through this blindness, they unknowingly wield their magick—their will and intent—through very dark, malignant, and baneful energetic exertions toward others, convincing themselves that they serve the divine while actually perpetuating cycles of spiritual manipulation, doctrinal control, and institutionalized religious oppression within both themselves and the social structures they inhabit.

This isn’t just something that affects one religion over another, mind you—this split in psyche, fragmentation of awareness, and lack of inner integration are all things that can affect all people, no matter what internal frameworks of belief, subconscious programming, or ideological conditioning they follow, not just those within organized religion. But for the sake of this reflection, and how deeply affected I have been by growing up around toxic forms of religion (while still acknowledging the healthy expressions that lead to authentic psychospiritual sovereignty, self-examination, and inner transformation), my focus here is on the psychological and energetic mechanisms at play within religious systems where a split in the psyche occurs and breeds hypocrisy—where individuals and collective bodies of pious belief all engage in the very acts of magick they condemn in others, using their will and intent to influence, control, and shape outcomes not only within their own lives, but also in the lives of others. And when it comes to the lives of others, these religious actors, when they are operating from an unexamined place of unresolved shadow, their intentions for others are far from benevolent. So, when they are operating from that place of inner distortion, ethical dissonance, and psychological inversion, they do this all under the guise of a rigid, fear-based, and authoritarian religious framework that sees itself only as light—where, beneath that façade of sanctity, a very dark undercurrent of religious control, psychological warfare, and pious deceit operates in the name of righteousness. And it’s within this contradiction that their illusion of goodness, purity, and absolute divine authority collapses, exposing that what they have been calling faith is, more often than not, simply them practicing baneful magick together in their congregations, prayer circles, sermons, and collective declarations of will disguised as divine guidance.

Having consciously separated myself from those expressions of faith in my own life, where I have found an authentic and healthy sense of connection with the divine outside of organized religion and toxic forms of spirituality—which are things that tend not to lead to genuine psychospiritual development—I’ve learned how to use my own will and intent in a consciously directed and benevolent manner within the framework of my own evolving relationship with the divine, where even in the protection the divine gives me, and in the discernment that comes from higher moral clarity and psychospiritual attunement, I still want others to wake up and start thriving in their own processes of psychospiritual refinement, even when they are actively resisting their own awakening or trying to bring harm into my energetic field. And this, to me, represents part of the true essence of faith or sacred communion with the divine—not blind adherence to dogma, rigid conformity, fear-based obedience, trying to earn worthiness through external validation, or needing others to conform to my own personal faith and individuated relationship with God, but a living, conscious relationship with the divine that becomes both shield and compass, guiding me into alignment with how higher principles of psychological growth and conscious development want to reveal themselves to me in my own unique path of refinement. And these principles I speak of, they actually help to foster authentic self-realization, expanded awareness, and deeper states of integrity within myself. Likewise, the continual deepening of my relationship with the divine that happens as I integrate the lessons of my growth and embody the cultivated wisdom that I’ve gained so far through the ongoing embodiment of it in my daily life and choices, it naturally fortifies my capacity to stand firm against energies that attempt to pull me out of alignment with my own individuated path and deeper calling, or that may try to bring harm to others and the greater field of collective awakening in general. This has allowed me to safeguard my energy and consciousness from those within the church, religious institutions, or from other self-proclaimed spiritual authorities who may be using their will and intent for manipulative, coercive, or otherwise nefarious purposes against others.

So, through that understanding and lived embodiment of my faith and inner refinement processes, I’ve come to recognize that reclaiming my own sovereignty from those systems and people that are ethically fractured or stagnant in their own conscious development processes, I’ve come to understand that faith—when freed from shadowed interpretations, unexamined dogma, performative faith that replaces genuine transformation, the rigidity of believing one cannot meet God outside of a tiny religious box, or even the collective perversions of what it means to commune and co-create with the divine—that in its liberated state, faith reveals itself as an act of sacred magick, one rooted not in domination, but rather in alignment with a higher divinical force. And from that place of higher alignment, faith becomes a living current of divine illumination and discernment, a regenerative force that restores my psychospiritual sovereignty, rekindles my genuine connection to a greater humanical consciousness, fortifies the inner strength that once gave way to disconnection from self and states of despair, and awakens within me the capacity to continually refine and expand myself beyond imposed limitation—limitations that were born from religion, society, family, politics, national identity, cultural programming, or any collective system of control that once kept me from developing myself on a deep internal level. And surprisingly enough, by operating in such a liberated and authentic state of being in my faith, and from the work I’ve been doing on myself and the authentic Source energy I’ve been connecting with—the consciousness, clarity of sound mind, and inner strength that I’ve been cultivating and embodying—it has begun to spill out into the spaces I inhabit, subtly influencing the energetic environments around me with illumination, restoration, and a higher ethical consciousness that challenges dogmatic tyranny, religious exploitation, and the ethical decay upheld by unrespectable authority figures wherever it hides.

I think that what many people fail to realize—especially those that are still bound by the illusion of religious exclusivity and the spiritual distortion they perpetuate, which convinces them that they alone hold a monopoly over higher forms of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding (where in their spiritual hollowness, they don’t even actually strive for inner transformation, psychospiritual development, or integration of said higher knowledge, wisdom, and understanding—it’s merely a performance of virtue for them that is meant to preserve social approval and an unhealthy sense of control over others)—is that the working of magick has never been about forsaking the use of it altogether, because in the context of what real magick is, it’s literally impossible to do so, since everything we do is, in some way, an act of magick. This is because every thought, emotion, word, action, and intention carries creative force—and when we are unconscious of that truth, it’s very often wielded from shadow, fear, or unresolved inner fragmentation, that is unless we become more aware, refined, and self-possessed in our consciousness. So, it’s not about whether we use magick or not, as that force of creation will always move through us and others, but it’s more so about how we use it—because the same universal laws that govern energy, will, and manifestation, they apply to all beings, regardless of what name they give their practice (and regardless of whether they pretend like they don’t practice magick while simultaneously practicing it and demonizing its use). And that what determines whether one’s use of will and intent becomes constructive or corruptive, healing or harmful, liberating or enslaving, is the level of self-awareness, integrity, wisdom, and inner coherence from which it is wielded.

And so, for me, reclaiming that awareness has been both liberating and sobering, and it’s shown me that faith and magick are not opposing forces—they are actually mirror expressions of the same innate capacity that all beings share to shape reality through their consciousness, where the real work, then, is not to reject magick or faith, but to purify the consciousness behind them—and to embody a form of magickal creation that uplifts, refines, and awakens rather than binds, blinds, or corrupts (although binding magick can be used for benevolent reasons, I’m more so referring here to the kind of binding that restricts, suppresses, or controls in malignancy rather than protects or restores balance). And perhaps that’s where true spiritual maturity begins—not in pretending to be separate from the forces of creation, but in learning to wield them responsibly, with awareness, humility, and depth. Because at the end of the day, whether we call it prayer, inner will, intent of heart, focused intention, directed consciousness, divine co-creation, or magick, all of it is simply consciousness in motion—with the creative essence within us meeting the underlying forces of existence itself to bring about change, internally or externally—and it’s what we do with that intersection that determines the kind of world we shape, both within and without.

I can’t say that doing this will be easy, because if we have been operating from deep wounds, internal fragmentation, or distorted programming that we have gathered along the way in life, most likely, we have been unconsciously creating through those fractures with our magick—using the same creative power that was meant to liberate us, elevate our consciousness, or to help expand our soul’s awareness, to instead reinforce our pain, to keep us in conditioned perceptions, and to limit what we are “allowed” to be and express in life. And unless we actually put in the work to heal, integrate, and transform our inner world, we will only continue to recreate versions of the same unconscious realities, internally or externally, that keep us bound to cycles of suffering, stagnation in our conscious development, and creating from shadow instead of higher conscious intent.

So, the truth is, the quality of what we create with our magick mirrors the quality of our inner state. If our consciousness is still polluted by our own lack of psychospiritual development, rigid belief systems, emotional reactivity, and absence of higher conscious intent, then no matter how much we believe that we are working for “good,” what we manifest will inevitably carry the same energetic imprint of those unresolved forces. But when we do the deep inner work—when we refine our inner landscape, purify our intent of heart, and align our will with higher states of integrity, wisdom, and enlightened discernment—our magick then becomes something entirely different. It becomes a living expression of what constitutes truly healthy conscious creation, something that is capable of transforming not just our own reality, but the energetic structures that surround us. And this kind of creation, born from a refined state of awareness and inner attunement with higher ethical grounding, it has the power to ripple outward—affecting genuine change for the good and for the better, all in the context of a universal expression of higher conscious-based order that’s not built upon low-conscious religious frameworks of thinking, feeling, and being—which are rigid frameworks of human being that only ever keep people psychospiritually stagnant and society collectively trapped in regressive cycles of ignorance and arrested evolution.

And that, to me, is the ultimate realization: that the most powerful magick—in its purest, most uncorrupted, and elevated form—is found in the mastery of one’s own consciousness, not in demonizing the literal creative force that animates all of existence and splitting the psyche into false moral dualities where people convince themselves that magick is evil yet practice it in their prayers, proclamations of faith, communal invocations of will and intent, public displays of sanctity that serve appearances rather than conscious growth, or the attempt to authoritarianly dominate society and convert others as a substitute for doing one’s own inner work. Because what often follows from that is a ritualized and unexamined conformity to tradition, institutional loyalty, or collective identity—one that imitates devotion to the divine yet restricts people’s freedom in the spirit, their very own individuated connection with Source, and their expansive development as conscious beings, where institutional control sustains authority over what people are allowed to experience with the divine and how far they are allowed to grow in their own processes of psychospiritual development and refinement. And when people heal what is fragmented within them, when they reclaim their creative power from their own unconscious distortions, and when they learn to move that power through inner refinement, heightened discernment, and psychospiritual precision, they stop unconsciously contributing to the darkness of the collective and start becoming instruments of illumination, authentic transformation, and higher evolution within it instead.