If you are into productivity, biohacking, and personal development, you’ve likely encountered the concept of ‘smart drugs.’ Intended to treat things like narcolepsy, such substances boost brain chemicals, promoting wakefulness and focus.
If you’re into spirituality, philosophy, and creativity. Then you’re aware of using psychedelics and pharmaceuticals to help deal with unexamined parts of the self or experiences and figure out who you (actually) are. Or to simply boost idea generation through micro-dosing, like those in Silicon Valley.
While the research behind them is fascinating, what if I told you that there’s a system of techniques that can serve in comparable ways? What if I also told you that you don’t need prescriptions, jungles, deserts, or shamans, but time and commitment, similar to studying bodybuilding and living the lifestyle?
In this one, we’ll discuss how Magick can be a healthier and exceedingly more accessible alternative in today’s world of unseen stress, demands, and global competition.
The Pressure to Enhance
“A hyper-connected world means the talent pool you compete in has gone from hundreds of thousands spanning your town to millions or billions spanning the globe. This is especially true for jobs that rely on working with your head versus your muscles(…). More fields will fall into this category as digitization erases global boundaries.”
— Morgan Housel. The Psychology of Money. p.108
This is why many turn to smart drugs and psychedelics in this endless mental Olympics. As evident in the works of Dave Asprey, Tim Ferris, Aubrey Marcus, and Dan Koe, these tools became normal and even expected. It is like taking steroids to compete in sports. But that comes with a price.
The Price
Everything comes at a cost. The price of taking ‘smart drugs’ can include side effects, like:
- Jitters,
- No sex,
- Nausea,
- Depression,
- Dependency or addiction, and
- Even unlocking a full-blown panic disorder like Agoraphobia.
Besides the dedication to learning things that won’t make any sense for a while, the price of Magick can include:
- Severe doubts,
- Irrational fears,
- Increased vulnerability,
- Hyper-awareness and sensitivity,
- Uncomfortable realizations, and situations,
- Amplified character traits you genuinely dislike.
Tolerance
Drugs build tolerance, requiring more for the same effects. With Magick, tolerance is almost a goal, especially when getting familiar with the Elements.
The Elements represent aspects of your psyche. Besides underlying issues that quietly impact your life, this includes potentially game-changing latent faculties you’ve been underutilizing.
Melting Metals
Although much more gradual, cycling the Elements can land you on realizations similar to psychedelics. It is the alchemical process of melting and reshaping metals, aka your structures, dogmas, and hard-wired notions.
If you despised one of your parents but had an underlying sadness and caring for the other, that comes with full force. If people treated you poorly, but you didn’t realize it, you will.
If you take others for granted, you won’t feel good about it. If your work and relationships are not aligned with your core being, they will change. If your lifestyle is not health-promoting, you may be forced to change.
Based on my research, Ayahuaska and 5-MeO-DMT can bring all this in a few hours, coupled with vomiting and feeling like dying. This is why Shamans sometimes offer to:
“Let yourself die.”
Similarly, surrendering to the process is key to building tolerance and working the Elements properly. Once you (really) do, you’ll be more or less reborn as a new person.
The more you work with each Element, the more tolerance you build, and the more you can direct your efforts toward productive aims. Magick lets you make that process more or less intense via:
- General or specific banishings.
- Counter invocations,
- Different cycles of the force,
- Balancing and centering rites, etc.
Conversely, there’s not much you can do once a substance hits your system. Let me know if you agree.
What’s Already There
Drugs and Magick both work on what’s already there. Some say nootropics make you more of yourself. They don’t make you a better writer if your writing sucks, but they can make you write more.
Magick also won’t make you a better writer—but it can help you:
- Access deeper truths and materials, and
- Show up consistently, which, over time, makes you better at anything.
If you are already a decent writer, working with Mercury, for instance, can give you the genuine desire to sit down and write for four hours. And if you have an addictive personality, you might write a book or **two** and some content.
In that sense, both Magick and nootropics increase the likelihood or shift the probability of something happening based on your current situation. Either way, taking action is non-negotiable since neither does the work for you or changes that situation.
What Version?
Self-help teaches becoming the “best version of yourself” — a promise often sold through substances and stimulants. From a magickal standpoint, this can be vague and naive. The reality is that you have different versions of yourself coexisting together, each having its strengths and flaws.
Properly navigating each lets you bring your A-game to every situation.
All our activities and experiences can be grouped and mapped onto the Qabalistic Tree of Life, the central schema of Western Esotericism. Each Sephirah has a vice and virtue and a mystical and a practical aspect governing:
- Receptivity, answers, and conclusions.
- External actions and projections.
Your best version varies:
- Sometimes, the right version of yourself implies fierce ambition. Geburah
- Others are about ideation and creative imagination. Chesed
- Third, organization, planning, Hod
- Or putting limitations on the amount of work and time a project takes you. Saturn
- Or even bringing joy to your inner child, so the whole operation—called your life—actually runs smoothly, (Yesod). And all versions of yourself are satisfied with their piece of the cake. Tiphereth
Getting to know each is getting to know yourself. Knowing yourself is navigating life aligned with your nature and strengths, eventually living your Ikigai.
The Muppet Master
Most people walk through life as muppets of the Qabalah— dominated by these forces without even knowing it. Qabalistic Magick puts you in the driver’s seat. You become the one pulling the strings.
Nootropics and stimulants, on the other hand, are often used to push through things people hate. Consider all the students abusing Adderall or Modafinil. Or take those in hustle culture, spending decades working themselves to death just to be wildly rich one day. How is that any different from organized religion promoting self-abuse so you can go to heaven later?
The Best of Both Worlds
Ultimately, it doesn’t have to be either-or. There are natural ways to boost performance and creativity.
- NoFap,
- Fasting,
- Exercise,
- Proper Diet,
- Supplements,
- Quality Coffee, etc.
All of them optimize brain chemistry and hormones, letting you perform at your best. This is why modern alchemists advocate them alongside smart drugs and psychedelics.
The more you fine-tune and combine each, the better vessel you’ll be and the more power to your Magick.
So I don’t think the question is whether you should use Magick; rather, why wouldn’t you dedicate the time to study and practice in a world where the mentioned substances are often the standard, and everyone has some sort of an “unfair advantage.”
The most influential occultists weren’t purists but synthesizers, incorporating the methods and tactics that best served their systems. Use them as examples and do the same.
The mightiest hack isn’t in herbs or pills—it’s in leveraging your Will.
It has a lot to do with your genetic predispositions, true nature, and even your sense of style and taste.
— POTB
But that’s just my opinion. Let me know if you agree. Consider my products and books. And thank you for your time.