The Duelist

As the will is an important facet of magical workings, magicians often find themselves confronting issues regarding confidence. But confidence in and of itself is a slippery concept, which people often ascribe to a certain posture one adopts in facing external pressure.

Mages unfamiliar with solar magic or the yellow magick from the Eight Colors of Magick scheme formulated by Peter Carroll tend to be wary of ego magic. After all, isn’t the ego something to be overcome rather than to be embraced, they think?

Confidence does not involve pretending to be secure, or convincing oneself with repeated affirmations. In fact, confidence in and of itself is not a goal or an ideal to be sought after. Confidence rather is a product of self-validation. People who lack confidence constantly seek validation from others because they are constantly judging themselves and expect other people to be doing the same.

But the fact of the matter is people have better things to do than to tell you if you are doing well for yourself or not. And if you cannot seek validation from yourself, which is a certainty that what you do is good enough, then you will never truly be confident. And without the confidence necessary to form will, a magician’s workings will either fail or form obsessions that one without self-validation will find himself lost in.

(This post can also be found on the Swords of Eternity wiki.)

I admit that my visions can never mean to other men as much as they do to me. I do not regret this. All I ask is that my results should convince seekers after Truth that there is beyond doubt something worthwhile seeking, attainable by methods more or less like mine. I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools & fanatics, or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.

- Aleister Crowley