Eunuchorn(imgur.com)NSFW
I agree about institutional authority. I wish there was some combination of Catholicism and some kind of anabaptism because of that.
I am booked solid for a few days and will read thoroughly after that. Before I even checked in I realized I should walk back the idea of "every" magic user. I stopped looking into that years ago and of course there were people were just getting into it, and people who were "wishing" for things they did not really want and did not really put their whole selves into it. But people I saw as peers or people just ahead of me and people I thought were leading the way (including a few notable authors) got fried after some point. It was across a full range of supposed expertise. One published a photo in support of a highly regarded book of his about how he had proof of interaction with an entity he worked with but it was just the way light passed through his window and curtains and it was iffy at best. True a photo is just that, but he had no big story about what it was just some thing he saw. And he was perhaps the most realisitic and "scienctific" approaching writers who did not sell it like it would get you lottery winnings or laid or anything like that, very down to earth he presents his stuff. So I can't say if he got burned doing it, I dont' recall either way if he had tragedies or not.
I've been busy for the last few days, but I wanted to respond. There are a few issues in play here. One of them is safety vs. efficacy, to use pharma language. Certain practices are highly effective but also highly unsafe. You don't hear much about them in polite society or easily-accessed areas of the internet, and there's a good reason for that. I have no personal experience with, say, the Goetia, but everything I hear about it suggests that Solomonic magic falls into this category (highly effective, highly unsafe). On the other side, "affirmations" and standard-issue Wicca falls into the very-safe-but-not-very-effective category. It's not completely ineffective, but it's weak. There is a sweet spot in which I practice, but it requires a high level of dedication (which is fine because I enjoy it). Things can go wrong, but not catastrophically wrong, almost always the mistakes can be fixed. However, I counseled a person I know and love around a career issue, and because they didn't follow the (very simple) recipe I gave them, things took a turn for the worse. I learned a lesson there.
The other issue is that a lot of people don't understand what they really want or need. I know of a person who just wanted a big, impressive house. She didn't understand that she needed to become the kind of person who owns a big impressive house. When you frame things in terms of becoming instead of having then the stakes become much clearer. I have become the kind of person that has certain experiences and possessions, and "magic" has played a very large role in the becoming. But the becoming precedes the having. And, for me personally, I "have" only to support the relationships that are important to me, as well as the "becoming" which is a compelling process in and of itself.
