Photo by Magenta
For many who walk a path of ritual, reflection or magickal practise, a quiet, nagging question often lingers in the shadows of the altar: Is it selfish to want more?
We are frequently taught that spiritual or personal growth should be a pursuit of selflessness, leading us to view our desires for success, ease, or influence with a touch of suspicion. We worry that “magick for personal gain” is somehow a detour from “higher” work. But this tension relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of why we want what we want.
In the Humanistic Magick framework, desire is not a moral failing or a distraction. Instead, it is treated as vital information. Think of your desire as a compass pointing to what Abraham Maslow called “self-actualisation”.
When we feel the pull towards a different life, a bigger business or deeper healing, we aren’t just looking for “stuff and things.” We are responding to a natural, human drive towards growth and wholeness. The discomfort we often feel about getting our wants and desires isn’t caused by the desire itself, but by a disconnection between our external goals and our internal truth.
So, how can we reframe personal gain as a process of integration? We do this by blending symbolic practise with the psychological principles of Carl Rogers and Maslow so we can move away from the hollow pursuit of “getting stuff” and towards the transformative practise of “becoming.”
Whether you are navigating the world of professional leadership, creative practise or deep inner healing, the goal remains the same: to move from fragmentation to expression, using magick not to force the world to change, but to align ourselves so completely that change becomes inevitable.
So What Do We Mean by Magick for Personal Gain?
Magick for personal gain is the use of intentional, symbolic or reflective practises (such as visualisation, tarot or journalling) to create desired change in one’s life.
Humanistic magick is a psychology-informed framework that integrates therapeutic principles with symbolic practises to support meaningful, lasting personal change.
Both help people to achieve their full potential, something Abraham Maslow refers to as self actualisation.
Magick for Personal Gain: A Quick Summary
Wanting more from life is not selfish. It is part of human development. Misalignment is often what creates discomfort or guilt.
Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow both viewed growth as a natural part of human drive, and the way to achieve personal growth is often predetermined by having your other “needs” met.
Humanistic Magick reframes “personal gain” as integration rather than acquisition per se, and it finds its place across all areas of life. Whether this is in personal healing, business growth and leadership goals, desire becomes a signal pointing towards your true potential, not a flaw.
The Question Beneath the Question
At some point, most people working with magickal or reflective practises encounter a quiet tension: Is it selfish to want more for oneself? More clarity. More success. More ease. More meaning.
The question itself often carries a subtle judgement, as if wanting something beyond just surviving must come at the expense of something (or someone) else.
But what if the discomfort isn’t about desire at all? What if it’s about how disconnected we’ve become from understanding it?
Desire Is Not the Problem, Disconnection Is
In humanistic magick, desire is not treated as something to suppress or justify. It is treated as information.
Both Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers recognised that human beings are not designed to remain static. We are oriented toward growth, expression and fulfilment.
Maslow described this as self-actualisation, which is the natural movement toward becoming who you are capable of being.
Rogers described it as the actualising tendency, which is a directional force within us that seeks development, wholeness and congruence.
From this perspective, the desire for “more” is developmental, rather than selfish.
Where the Tension Comes From
The tension arises when desire becomes separated from self awareness. In other words, when we pursue outcomes that don’t actually feel aligned and measure success against external expectations or use manifestation or magickal practises to override a situation rather than understand ourselves.
This is often where “personal gain” starts to feel hollow, performative or even uncomfortable.
Not because wanting is wrong, but because what we are wanting may not yet be integrated.
Reframing Personal Gain as Integration
Humanistic magick offers a subtle but important shift in that personal gain is not about getting more stuff, it is about becoming more integrated.
This is where your own integration path quietly sits beneath the surface.
When you’re feeling something “just isn’t for me” or “I don’t deserve that”, desire feels distant or unattainable. When you start feeling “maybe I want more than this”, you have started to recognise that something could change.
Integration begins through exploration, asking questions like “what do I actually want, and why?” Embodied alignment shows up once you know you can act on your desires without losing yourself.
Desire, in this sense, becomes less about acquisition and more about alignment with the self.
What This Feels Like Across Different Lives
In healing and personal growth desire often shows up as a longing for relief, clarity or self acceptance. At first, it can feel uncertain, but as integration deepens it becomes knowing that you can support yourself in creating a life that feels more like yours.
In business and creative practise, desire may appear as ambition, visibility or structure. Initially you might feel like “I want this to work, but I don’t want to lose what makes it meaningful.” Later this feels more like the ability to build something sustainable without compromising who you are.
In corporate leadership and influencing roles desire often centres around impact, connection to others and integrity. So at first you might discover you want to lead differently, but don’t know how to do that without risk until you find you can lead in a way that reflects both your strength and humanity.
Across all aspects of life, the movement is the same: Moving from fragmentation to integration.
The Role of Magick in This Process
Magickal practises, when grounded in a humanistic framework, don’t “force” outcomes. They create space to engage with desire more honestly. Such as using visualisation to explore what a desired future feels like to uncover any self sabotaging blocks or journalling to uncover whether a goal is internally or externally driven and even through ritual as a way of marking intentional change.
In this sense, magick becomes understanding why you want what you want and whether it reflects who you are becoming, rather than only about getting what you want.
Reflective Exercises for Integration
Let’s try some reflective exercises to demonstrate all of this. These are designed to work across all aspects of life.
1. The “What Do I Actually Want?” practise
Write down something you want.
Then ask, gently and honestly:
- What do I believe this will give me?
- How do I expect to feel if I have it?
- Is there another way I already experience that feeling?
This work starts to shift desire from being outcome driven to emotional meaning making.
2. The Congruence Check (Inspired by Rogers)
Reflect on a current goal and explore:
- Does this feel like my goal, or something I’ve absorbed from someone else?
- Where do I feel tension or resistance around it?
- What would this look like if it were fully aligned with me?
This builds awareness of internal vs external motivation.
3. The Integration Visualisation
Reflect on how you show up for other people, and what you prefer to do differently. Rather than visualising the outcome, visualise yourself:
- Acting with ease in situations that currently feel difficult for you
- Responding in ways that feel natural to who you really are rather than forced by others’ expectations of you
- Holding both competence and authenticity simultaneously
This supports identity level change, not just outcome-level thinking.
So… Is It Selfish?
Not in the way it’s often assumed. Wanting more from your life, your work, your leadership etc is not inherently selfish. But it does ask something of you. It asks you to become more aware. More honest and importantly, more integrated.
Because the real shift here is found in asking “can I become the person who is aligned with what I want, and act from that place?” rather than asking “Can I have what I want?”
A Gentle Invitation
If this resonates, you might begin by noticing where in your life does desire feel clear to you and where does it feel conflicted?
That question alone often marks the beginning of movement along your integration path.
References
Credit where credit is due, we aim to cite our sources because we value truthful content. 3 sources were used as part of our research for this article, and you are encouraged to follow our other links.
- Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396.
- Maslow, A. H. (1968). Toward a psychology of being (2nd ed.). Van Nostrand.
- Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist’s view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.
About Humanistic Magick
Humanistic Magick is a psychology-informed framework developed by Andie Brookes that integrates reflective and symbolic practises to support meaningful, lasting personal change. Explore the full reference guide here: https://magentaschoolofmagick.com/what-is-humanistic-magick/
Citing This Work
If you reference this article in your own writing, teaching, or research, please cite:
Brookes, A. (2026). Is Magick for Personal Gain Selfish? Magenta School of Magick.
Thank you for subscribing. By subscribing you now have premiere access to exclusive content. Do you know someone who would like to enjoy all our free content? Please share this with them and invite them to subscribe too!
