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

Postscript
Final Thoughts

Ibegan working on this book in Boulder, Colorado, a very long way from my home in New York City. I sat in a hotel room and watched as snow swirled and fell steadily outside the window against the backdrop of the Front Range mountains, and it felt like I was in some kind of enormous snow globe. It was actually the end of May, but it felt like Christmas.

The snowy scene felt like a gift from magick itself. Seeing it, my heart flooded with gratitude, so much so that I felt like I could cry. Ever since I was a child, the thing I loved most was the holidays, especially Christmastime. No matter where I am, that time of year makes me feel like I’ve come home. It also feels like the time when magick is at its most powerful. It took me months to finish writing what eventually came to be the book you now hold in your hands, and that was at the end of November in Harlem, and although the scene was starker and grayer, it once more felt like Christmas.

I want to thank you for coming on this journey with me. Thank you for your interest in magick and for wanting to learn these techniques and practices. I hope this is only the beginning of your journey, and I wish you well on a path that, if you choose, you will travel forever. I have no doubt that magick will begin to help you, comfort you, and bring you what you need — even before you ask or command it to do so.

If you were to tell me when I was a kid that I would grow up to write and share a book on magick with people, it would have been too impossibly good to believe. It would have been the pinnacle of everything I ever could have hoped for, and now it has come to fruition. My whole life has led up to this book — even the most difficult and trying parts of my arduous journey to get here. Magick has been with me every step of the way, and it will also be there for you.

In closing, I want to once more extend my thanks to the Sounds True family for inviting me to do this project and for taking such excellent care of me along the way. I am forever grateful, and it will be an experience I remember and treasure for the rest of my life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Damien Echols was born in 1974 and grew up in Mississippi, Tennessee, Maryland, Oregon, Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. When he was eighteen, Damien and two other young men were wrongfully convicted of murder, eventually becoming known as the West Memphis Three. Having received a death sentence, Damien spent almost two decades on death row, until he was released in 2011. While in prison, Damien was ordained into the Rinzai Zen Buddhist tradition. He is the subject of Paradise Lost, a three-part documentary series produced by HBO, and West of Memphis, a documentary produced by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh. Damien is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Life After Death and Yours for Eternity.

Damien teaches classes on magick around the country and works as a visual artist. His artwork entails glyphs, sigils, and symbols designed to bypass the conscious mind and speak directly to the subconscious, combining magick techniques with his own alphabet and writing system to break down concepts and scenarios into abstract designs. He and his wife, Lorri Davis, live in New York City with their three cats.

For more information, visit Damien at damienechols.com, on Facebook, on Instagram @damienechols, or on Twitter @Damienechols.