Again.

In the Mask of Zorro, there's a scene where Anthony Hopkins (Diego) is training Antonio Banderas (Allejandro) in sword fighting. Throughout the scene, as Allejandro gets better and better, Hopkins keeps saying, "Again!"

I tried to find the scene I'm talking about, but I could only find it in Czechoslovakian.

But anyway, that training scene is cool. Gaining proficiency in magic is a lot like that, a process of mistakes and gradual improvements, each time you get it right the universe hits you with "Again!" It takes practice to get good at it.

The first money spells I did were abysmal failures. I tried Jupiter, and had no success. The opposite of success, which is not failure, but actual regression. I tried Bune to win the lottery (cliche, I know), and failed. I changed my approach with him and found success, and failure. I tried the Solar Heptameron Angels, and failed, miserably. I haven't went back and tried them again since. I tried Och of the Olympik spirits, and had some success, and some failure. I tried Jupiter again, this time with some experience under my belt, and found bountiful success. I tried Mercury and found another kind of success. I put Jupiter and Mercury together and found still yet more kinds of success.

These days, I've got the knack of it. I have everything I need, and then some. I'm working on increasing that, too, aiming for an impossible goal by dividing the process into steps, and magicing each step to be a great success. Building my way up to the million dollar idea. Strategically.

And it's working.

But I wouldn't be able to enchant for success without having tried, again and again. I failed and was told Again! I succeeded and was told, "Again!" Each time I learned something new, learned the things that had to be in place to ease the transition from idea and thought to actual experience, learned how the forces manifest, learned how to apply them in ways that are better and more successful.

Magic doesn't always work. I mean, it always does something, but not always what you want or expect. That's because we don't know shit about shit going into this. Words don't convey the process adequately, and a lot of the people writing when my generation of magicians were learning were talking out their collective asses about things they hadn't experienced, advanced concepts of a system they had never been initiated into.

These days we've got magicians doing the magic and posting the results, and it's a beautiful thing. But still, my words can't convey the experience that brings skill. I can tell you about it, but I cna't make you feel it. Book smarts aren't hands-on smarts.

Do the magic, do it and fail, and do it again. Steps towards the goal. You can't change the world with your magic until you learn how to use your magic, and you can't do that reading about it.