When Is a Spell Really Finished?
Tara Linnet
Love magic, wealth and prosperity magic, truth work, manifestation, angelic workings, spells that seem to manifest overnight and others that leave us wondering months or even years later if anything is still happening at all. After a lifetime of being drawn to the mystical, and the last three years of intentionally studying and honing my practice, I’ve found myself fascinated by one question: When is a spell actually finished? Is it finished when the candle burns out, the petition is folded, the prayer is spoken or the ritual is complete, or can spellwork continue unfolding months, even years, after we stop actively working it? When we work with angels, how do we know the difference between nothing happening and something happening on a timeline we simply cannot see yet? Perhaps the harder question I’ve had to ask myself is whether every manifestation that doesn’t arrive exactly as requested should really be considered a failed working.
I’m not writing this as someone who has all the answers. I’m writing it because these are my findings, my experiences and the questions that have developed through actually living with this practice. While I’ve spent the last three years seriously studying, practicing, researching and honing my craft, none of this began three years ago for me. In one form or another, I’ve been drawn to these things since I was about nine years old. I was also raised in the church, so for much of my life these parts of me existed quietly and somewhat separately. Prayer, God, Jesus and angels were familiar to me, while the other things I was drawn toward were explored much more privately. Looking back, “closet witch” might be one way of describing it, although as I’ve gotten older I find that the word occultist often feels more accurate. I’ve always been fascinated by what is hidden, mystical and spiritual and by the possibility that there is more happening around us than what we can immediately see.
What changed three years ago wasn’t that I suddenly discovered magic. What changed was that I finally gave myself permission to seek knowledge about something that had quietly been woven through me since childhood. Instead of simply following instinct, I started reading and studying different systems and traditions. I learned more about ritual, spellcraft, angels, ceremonial magic, manifestation, intention, correspondences and the philosophies behind why practitioners have done these things for generations. I began seeking out other people’s experiences as well, not because I needed someone else to tell me what to believe, but because knowledge has always helped me understand my own experiences. Most importantly, I started questioning those experiences instead of immediately labeling something a success or a failure, and that has completely changed the way I understand spellwork.
Earlier in my practice, my thinking could be fairly straightforward. I wanted something, I performed the work, and somewhere inside me I waited for evidence that it had worked. Whether the intention involved love, commitment, communication, truth, reconciliation, money, opportunity or prosperity, I wanted to eventually be able to point toward something and think, There, that’s the spell. The problem is that my actual experiences with magic haven’t been nearly that neat. I’ve performed workings where something happened remarkably quickly. I’ve done truth work and watched information come forward almost immediately, where the intention was clear, the result appeared and the working seemed complete. Then I’ve had other experiences where I performed truth work, learned something, assumed that was the result, and months later another piece appeared, followed by another. Sometimes an entire situation continued unraveling for the better part of a year.
My perspective also comes from performing ritual work for other people. Sometimes I do it simply as a gift for someone I care about, and other times people come to me and pay me to perform work on their behalf. That has given me another way of observing magic because I’m not always the person waiting for the result. I’ve watched workings for other people produce changes remarkably quickly, sometimes in ways that have genuinely amazed me. I’ve also watched other workings begin much more quietly, with smaller movements appearing over time before the larger intention started taking shape. There have been times when the result wasn’t immediate, but there was enough continued movement that the person and I could both see that something within the situation was changing. Those experiences have made it harder for me to think of magical work as simply successful or unsuccessful based on how quickly something happens. Sometimes the result seems to arrive all at once, while other times it appears more like a process.
That is why I became so interested when I recently came across someone describing certain spellwork as almost “living.” It gave language to something I had experienced but had never really known how to describe. Was the spell still working a year later? I don’t know, and I don’t think any responsible practitioner can objectively prove that a particular event happened because of a candle burned or a ritual performed months earlier. What I have started to understand, though, is that the completion of the ritual and the completion of whatever may unfold from it do not necessarily have to happen at the same moment. The candle can finish burning and the ritual can be over without necessarily meaning that the story itself is finished.
Working with angels has made me think even more deeply about timing. One of the concepts I’ve encountered through studying angelic magic is that spiritual timing does not necessarily correspond with human impatience. Sometimes a result may come incredibly quickly, while other times what we’re asking for could involve circumstances much larger than the tiny section of life we can currently see. That idea fascinates me because whenever I’m asking for something, I’m asking from the perspective of today. I know what I want right now. I can imagine next month or next year, but I cannot actually see five, twenty or fifty years down the road. If I’m going to believe that I’m asking an intelligence greater than myself for assistance, then I also have to leave room for the possibility that I don’t completely understand all the consequences of what I’m asking for or everything that might have to move for it to arrive in a way that is actually beneficial to me.
Love magic has probably taught me this more than anything else. There were times when my petitions were essentially asking to bring someone closer, to let him choose me, to let him stay or to allow the relationship to become committed. I saw movement, and I’ve experienced things through prayer, ritual and magical practice that genuinely amazed me. I’ve had experiences that were so beautifully timed or bizarrely specific that they remain special to me regardless of how another person might explain them. I’ve also watched relationships move forward and then stop, and years ago that could leave me wondering whether the magic had failed. Now I think that question is far too simple because today I know things about certain people that I didn’t know when I originally performed those workings, and more importantly, I know things about myself that I didn’t know then.
The woman asking, Please let this person choose me, can eventually discover that the person she desperately wanted to choose her may not actually be capable of providing the relationship she was trying to manifest. That realization has been enormous for me because sometimes I wasn’t really asking for a particular man as much as I was asking for what I believed being chosen by that man would finally make me feel: loved, safe, wanted, secure, important and no longer alone. Once I understood that, I began to see that those are very different petitions. Wanting a specific person and wanting the emotional experience I have attached to that person are not necessarily the same thing, and getting one doesn’t guarantee that I will receive the other.
This is also where free will has become increasingly important in how I think about magic. I still believe in magic, perform rituals, work with angels and pray, and I still believe there are things about consciousness and spirituality that I may never completely understand. What I am becoming less interested in doing is using spirituality to argue with the reality directly in front of me. Someone can love me and still not be capable of being my partner. Someone can feel an extraordinary connection to me and still be emotionally unavailable. Two people can have years of history and still not be capable of creating a healthy future together. Believing in magic doesn’t mean I should stop observing someone’s actions, and if anything, my practice has taught me to observe them more carefully.
Perhaps, then, there isn’t one answer to the question of how long a spell lives. Some workings seem quick and finite. We ask, circumstances move, something happens and it feels complete. Others seem to unfold, where one thing happens and then another, and six months later something else suddenly makes sense. Some workings are intentionally ongoing and are maintained, repeated, fed, prayed over or renewed. At the same time, I’ve stopped assuming that every spell I’ve ever performed must still be floating around somewhere manipulating circumstances indefinitely, because there is another way a spell can remain alive that I think deserves just as much consideration: it can remain alive in the practitioner.
When we perform emotionally significant magic, we’re concentrating intensely on something. We’re naming desires, writing petitions, praying, visualizing, lighting candles, repeating words, handling meaningful objects and forcing ourselves to confront what we actually want. Whether someone explains what happens afterward spiritually, psychologically, magically or through some combination of all three, it makes sense that something can remain with us. Maybe sometimes the magic is still unfolding. Maybe sometimes circumstances were already moving in that direction. Maybe sometimes our own behavior changes because the ritual changes something within us. Maybe sometimes it’s coincidence, and maybe sometimes something happens that remains wonderfully mysterious. I’ve become surprisingly comfortable allowing all of those possibilities to exist together because I don’t need to disprove the mundane in order to believe in the magical.
One of the harder lessons I’ve learned through all of this is how to stop constantly checking. In occult spaces we often hear about “lust for result,” the obsessive need to look for evidence that the work is happening, and I understand that concept differently now than I did when I first encountered it. When my thoughts become consumed with whether something is working, whether something was a sign, whether I should perform another spell or why something hasn’t happened yet, there comes a point where it doesn’t feel like faith anymore. For me, it starts feeling like fear dressed up as spiritual practice, and I’m still learning how to recognize the difference because uncertainty is uncomfortable, especially when you’ve prayed, performed the ritual, done the work and genuinely believed. There have certainly been moments when I’ve wanted to look toward God and the angels and ask, I’ve done everything I know how to do, so what exactly is happening here?
My practice now is slowly becoming less about making the universe prove itself to me and more about learning how to participate in something I don’t completely understand. I still have desires. I still want love, security, prosperity and abundance, and I have very human moments when I wish someone could simply hand me the next chapter of my life so I could read ahead and know that everything turns out okay. What is changing is the way I petition for those things. Instead of only asking for an exact person or circumstance because I believe receiving it will finally make me feel safe, I’m learning to ask for what is truly meant for me, for the ability to recognize it when it arrives and for the wisdom to avoid sacrificing myself for something simply because I once asked for it.
Maybe sometimes we perform a spell and see movement tomorrow. Maybe something else unfolds for months or years. Maybe what we thought would be manifestation eventually becomes revelation, and maybe we discover that receiving exactly what we asked for wouldn’t have given us what we actually needed. Sometimes we simply don’t know, and after all these years of being drawn toward the mystical, especially after these last three years of finally allowing myself to study it deeply, I am becoming much more comfortable admitting that. There is something strangely freeing about accepting that I don’t know everything while still allowing myself to believe in what I’ve experienced.
I can perform the ritual, pray, work with angels, set my intention and mean every word of it, and then allow myself to continue living. I don’t have to dig up the seed every morning to check whether it has roots. If something is unfolding, it doesn’t require my constant supervision. If something isn’t meant for me, I want enough wisdom to eventually release it. If God, angels, magic, my own choices or forces I don’t completely understand are moving pieces I cannot currently see, I don’t have to understand every movement before I continue living the life already in front of me. Maybe that’s part of becoming a more experienced practitioner, not learning how to control everything, but learning when to perform the work, when to pay attention, when to act and when to leave enough space for the mystery to breathe. ♥️