What Is My Magick?
A plain account of a word that scares people, and what I actually mean by it.
by CraigJustCraig
Start Here
You don't have to believe anything to read this page. I define every word as I go. If you've never heard “magick” used this way, you're exactly who I wrote it for.
The word carries baggage. Stage tricks. Fantasy novels. Superstition. Set all of that down for a minute. None of it is what I mean.
I spell it with a k. Magick, not magic. That spelling comes from a writer named Aleister Crowley, and it does one job. It tells you I'm not talking about illusions or sleight of hand. No cards, no rabbits, no smoke. Something else.
What I do is a practice. A set of things I do on purpose, with my body and my attention, to change how I live. That's the whole claim. Let me show you the rest slowly.
What Magick Means
Here's the plainest definition I can give you. Magick is the intentional transformation of consciousness to produce change in line with your will. Two heavy words in there. Let me take them apart.
Now the part a skeptic needs. I'm not saying reality bends to supernatural force. I'm saying this. Change a person deeply enough and their actions change. What they reach for changes. What they'll tolerate changes. And so their life changes. The work is on you. The results follow from who you become.
The spell is the transformation.
So treat this as a discipline. A practice of becoming, done on purpose, with real tools.
What My Magick Is
My magick is an embodied spiritual practice. Embodied means it runs through the body, not just the head. It grows from a few streams: African diasporic thought, leather culture (the traditions of consent, mentorship, and ritual that came out of queer BDSM communities), somatic psychology (the study of how the body holds emotion and memory), ritual, and the deliberate use of altered states.
It isn't a rebuild of any one tradition, and it doesn't speak for any tradition in full. It's my own living practice. It answers to four things: consent, safety, transformation, and service.
In it, rope is the instrument. Rope becomes ritual, prayer, meditation, ordeal, and language. A bridge between body, mind, memory, and imagination.
Your body is more than a vehicle, it is an archive. Our fascia holds memory, our nervous system catalogs our experience, and our posture encodes both our past and our potential.
The Philosophy Behind the Rope, by CraigJustCraig
Five Pillars
- Transformation through shadow. The shadow is the part of you you'd rather not look at. Rage, grief, fear, desire, the self you were taught to hide. I work with it instead of exiling it. What you refuse to face runs you from behind. What you meet, you can move.
- Rope as ritual technology. Binding and knotting are among the oldest ritual acts humans have. Tying restricts the body, and that restriction quiets the busy, ordinary mind. When the surface noise drops, deeper material rises. That's the point.
- The erotic as creative energy. I use “erotic” the way Audre Lorde did. Life-force and information, the deep yes that tells you when something is true. Not pornography. A source of power and a compass.
- Rewriting the story. We all inherit stories about ourselves. Scarcity. Shame. Fear of the body. Using symbol, ritual, and altered states, I look at those inherited stories and trade the ones that don't work for ones that do.
- The cultivation of the self. In the end this practice aims inward. The goal is alignment: thought, body, emotion, desire, and action all pointing the same way.
The greatest spell is the practitioner.
Lineage & Influences
I didn't make this out of nothing. It's built from teachers and traditions, and I name them plainly, with credit.
African & diasporic thought
- Malidoma & Sobonfu Somé Dagara ritual, grief work, and community.
- Marimba Ani African cosmology and cultural memory.
- Queen Afua Sacred wellness and the body as a temple.
- Paschal Beverly Randolph Nineteenth-century Black mystic and writer on sexual spirituality.
Somatics & trauma science
- Bessel van der Kolk How the body keeps the score of what it lives through.
- Peter Levine Releasing stored stress through the body, not around it.
- Stephen Porges The nervous system's map of safety, danger, and connection.
Depth psychology
- Carl Jung The shadow, and making the unconscious conscious.
- James Hillman Soul-making and the images we live by.
- Carolyn Elliott “Existential kink,” using desire as a doorway.
Tantra & yoga
- Barbara Carrellas Breath, energy, and ecstasy as practice.
- Daniel Odier The erotic as a spiritual path.
Leather tradition & the ordeal path
- Fakir Musafar Body ritual and the modern primitive lineage.
- Cléo Dubois Ordeal ritual and rites of passage.
- Lee Harrington Sacred kink and spiritual BDSM.
Ceremonial & chaos magick
- Ceremonial Structured ritual, symbol, and the disciplined shaping of attention.
- Chaos The pragmatic spirit: use what actually works, drop what doesn't.
These are living traditions that belong to real people and communities. I engage them with credit and care, I try to get them right, and I hold none of them in full. Where I get something wrong, the error is mine.
The Architecture of Becoming
The practice isn't a pile of techniques. It's built as a ladder, and each rung serves the one above it.
Read it from the bottom. A practice (rope) expresses a technology (how it works), which builds a capacity (who you become), which serves the purpose (becoming more fully yourself).
Across all of it run three domains. Think of them as three ways in.
- Heat Transformation through intensity. The ordeal, the edge, desire. You grow by turning the heat up.
- Bliss Transformation through joy. Rest, love, beauty, rapture, the return. You grow by softening and receiving.
- Tension Transformation through paradox. Holding two opposing forces at once: control and surrender, pain and pleasure. You grow by not resolving the contradiction too fast.
What This Is For
- Deepen self-awareness
- Process emotion
- Build resilience
- Explore intimacy
- Meet and integrate the shadow
- Reconnect with the body
- Expand consciousness
- Cultivate erotic intelligence
- Develop personal sovereignty, the felt sense that your body and your choices are your own
What This Is Not
One honest page deserves honest limits.
- One path, not the only one. I'm describing my practice. I'm not prescribing it as truth for anyone else.
- Not therapy. This is not a substitute for medical or psychological care. If you're in crisis or under treatment, that care comes first.
- Always voluntary. Everything is negotiated in advance, consent comes first, and it adapts to the person. No one is expected to take on every part of it.
Consent isn't a formality here. It's the ground the whole thing stands on. If you want to see how I hold it, read Rope & Consent →
That's the honest version. No smoke, no spectacle. A practice I built from real teachers and real traditions, run through the body, aimed at becoming more fully myself and helping the people I work with do the same. You don't have to call it magick. I do, because it's the truest word I've found for changing yourself on purpose.
The work is on you. The change follows.
Ashe.