I'm fascinated by anecdotes that focus on Will and how careful prescription of intention appears to be made manifest in the material world. In a word, "magic." I've certainly done my share of dabbling. Alas, my interest ebbs and flows with my needs and ever-wavering curiosity. I now like to believe that my will manifests naturally through the pusuit of well-defined goals. Still, I've had some remarkable results and if I feel the multiverse is not obliging me on a time scale to my liking, I attempt to tip the scales.

My favorite success story is entirely frivolous. I wanted to practice casting a sigil for something that I wasn't particularly attached to the result, so I chose Dark Chocolate. Why not? After all, who doesn't love dark chocolate?

So I wrote down all the letters, I-G-E-T-D-A-R-K-C-H-O-C-O-L-A-T-E, removed all the repeat letters, scrambled the remaining letters into something nonsensical that I could still pronounce and then crafted a sigil out of the letters, kind of like I was creating an elaborate cattle brand. (If your wondering what a sigil is, an internet search pulls up plenty, but if you've seen X-men 2, the blue guy who could appear and disappear was totally covered in angelic sigils.) I then proceeded to enter a meditative trance state and at the appropriate time, launched the sigil, burned if for good measure and proceeded to forget about it, a crucial step in my opinion, so as to avoid conflicting messages to my sub-conscious mind and from there out to the nether realms.

It's all about results. Why else would you pursue a course of action? So, I wasn't too surprised, but certainly pleased, when 3 days later my mother-in-law pulled me aside and led me into her bedroom, where she opened the top drawer of her dresser and pulled out a sizeable box of Godiva 72% dark chocolates and said, "I just got these, but I only need a few, so I thought I'd give the rest to you." If you knew the rocky relationship I have with my ma-in-law, you'd likely be shocked. I admit, if I hadn't cast the sigil, I would have been floored by the gesture. Instead, it just got the wheels turning in my mind. It was obvious to me that I'd influenced my local reality. The part that gets me is that I seem to have done so by influencing my ma-in-law, a being who is very wont to demonstrate that she is capable of free will. It almost feels like cheating. Kind of how I felt when I sold my house in five days after a heartfelt incantation.

I liken a good magic ritual to a good heartfelt prayer, only generally speaking, a good ritual will be far more focused. Certainly not if the prayer is done with proper intent, in which case there is no point in distinguishing it. I feel it is the intent behind the action that puts the wheels in motion.

Does anyone have any similar experiences?