High Magick: A Guide to the Spiritual Practices That Saved My Life on Death Row - Damien Echols 2018

Why Learn Magick?
An Introduction to Magick

First of all, you’re already doing magick. With every thought, word, and deed you are influencing the world around you and determining what comes your way. Even when I was in solitary confinement waiting to be executed, I could still shape my reality to a large degree. Granted, most people do this unconsciously — they make things happen in their lives without giving it a second thought. The only difference between a magician and your average person on the street is that a magician does magick intentionally. In my opinion, if you’re constantly exerting influence on reality, it’s a good idea to learn how to do it well.

I think spiritual visionaries have always been powerful practitioners of magick — the prophets of the Old Testament, Jesus, Muhammad, Lao Tzu, and Gautama Buddha, just to name a few. These people devoted their lives to spiritual evolution for the benefit of everyone. When someone asked the Buddha, “What are you? Are you a god, or are you a man?” The Buddha simply replied, “I’m awake.” He meant that he had awakened to how the whole thing works — to the laws of karma and to the fact that reality isn’t just something predetermined that happens to us. He was awake to the knowledge that we can all shape reality and create better environments for ourselves. We can actually do something about it.

Call this something whatever you’d like. I prefer to call it magick.

Every person on this earth is born with an entire universe of potential in them. Most people never cultivate the seeds of that potential, so the seeds go to waste and the people go through life wondering what went wrong, or blaming the world for everything that did go wrong. Magick waters those seeds to make that potential stir, grow, and flower. It accelerates our spiritual and mental development in ways we never could have predicted. Our ability to shape our destiny and the world around us using magick is limited only by our own belief, dedication, and creativity.

Once you begin experiencing magick, you will never see life the same way again.

This book will not cover every technique known to modern magicians. No single book could ever do that. There are hundreds and hundreds of methods of manifesting your desires with magick, and this particular book is my offering to help get you started down the path with some basic practices. Some will appeal to you, others will not. However, I encourage you to try each of them for a short time, in order to find the techniques that most strongly resonate with you. I also encourage you to seek out other authors, practices, techniques, and approaches, because no single magician or text is the ultimate authority.

The goal of this book is to provide you with the opportunity to experience the magick that resides within you — within each and every one of us, without exception. These rituals and practices are merely guidelines — a place to begin. Once you begin experiencing magick, you will never see life the same way again. You’ll grow increasingly aware of the currents of energy active all around you, and the interactions between energy and the material realm. And you’ll discover that, contrary to what you may have been told, there are no limits.

But I’m not here to tell you what to believe, and I’m not here to convert anyone. That’s not my job. My job (if you could call it that) is simply to show you what has worked for me through thick and thin, both today as a free man and during those years that I spent in hell. In that way, I guess you could say it’s my job to help. And my hope is that you’ll find these practices as useful in your life as I have found them to be in mine.