Photo by Magenta School of Magick
There is a strange period in almost every meaningful change where you can tell that something is happening, but you cannot quite explain what.
The person you were is still recognisable but the person you are becoming isn’t entirely clear yet. And somewhere between those two versions of yourself, you begin doing things differently.
Perhaps you respond differently to something that would once have unsettled you. Perhaps you notice yourself questioning an assumption you have carried for years. Perhaps something you once tolerated has become strangely uncomfortable. Perhaps you’re running your business differently, making decisions with a little less need for reassurance. Perhaps you’re sitting in a meeting and realise that you don’t need to provide the answer quite as quickly as you once did.
Nothing dramatic has happened, and yet something has changed.
Sometimes we risk overlooking these smaller moments while waiting for transformation to look more impressive. Afterall, we expect change to announce itself but often, it doesn’t.
Sometimes it simply appears in the negative space between what you used to do and what you find yourself doing now.
What if transformation doesn’t feel transformative?
There is a version of personal development in which change follows a reassuringly neat sequence.
For example, you identify what isn’t working. You decide what needs to change. You do the work. You become different.
Our experience of change has rarely been quite so orderly. Often we begin changing before we fully understand what we are changing into and that can be uncomfortable. What do we mean? Well, an old identity may have stopped “fitting” or “working out” without there being an obvious new identity ready to replace it. The way you used to make decisions may no longer feel right, while trusting yourself to make them differently still feels unfamiliar. Or you might know that you don’t want to keep living, working, creating or leading in quite the same way, without knowing what the alternative looks like.
There can be a temptation at this point to assume that nothing is happening. But uncertainty isn’t necessarily evidence that change has stalled. Sometimes uncertainty exists precisely because change has already begun.
The old answers aren’t working anymore, though you haven’t finished discovering the new ones. The fact you noticed the old answers aren’t working anymore is a huge change.
We use different words for the same human experiences
This is one of the reasons we still use the word magick. And we know that word won’t work for everybody.
For some people, magick is a perfectly natural part of their spiritual worldview. Ritual, symbolism, intuition and intention provide ways of understanding themselves and participating consciously in their own development.
For someone building a spiritually orientated or creative business, those ideas may also sit comfortably alongside questions about purpose, identity, creativity and how they want to show up through their work.
But if you work in a large organisation, lead a team or spend your days surrounded by operating models, governance, strategy and performance conversations, the word magick might feel considerably less comfortable.
You might even have felt a little sceptical when you saw it in the title.
That’s okay. You don’t have to call what you’re experiencing magick. You might call it coaching. Development. Reflection. Behavioural change. Organisational development. Identity work. Leadership. Growth. Or simply learning.
We’re less interested in persuading you to adopt our language than we are in exploring the human experience underneath it. Because whatever language we choose, there remains something remarkable about our capacity to imagine a way of being that doesn’t quite exist yet, and then gradually participate in becoming it.
That is where the word magick still means something to us.
The strange work of becoming
When we think about change, we often focus on outcomes. Things like more confidence. A healthier relationship with ourselves. A sustainable business. A more empowered team. A different leadership style. But before any of those things become established, there is usually a much quieter developmental process taking place.
You are practising something you don’t yet completely believe belongs to you. You might be learning to trust your judgement before you feel like a confident person. You might be setting a boundary while still feeling guilty for setting it. You might be creating something in your business without knowing whether anyone will want it. You might be giving somebody in your team space to solve a problem themselves while every instinct tells you to step in and fix it.
These moments can feel awkward precisely because the behaviour has moved slightly ahead of the identity. You are doing something the old version of you wouldn’t necessarily have done, but the new version of you doesn’t feel completely natural yet either.
That space interests us enormously. Because perhaps “becoming” isn’t the moment when we finally feel different. Perhaps becoming is in all the small moments in which we practise being different before it feels normal.
Look for the evidence of becoming
One of the things we encourage people to notice is what we think of as “Evidence of Becoming”.
These are the small pieces of evidence that suggest change is already underway. They are easy to dismiss because they don’t look overly dramatic. It’s when you pause before reacting. When you notice the negative thought rather than automatically believing it. When you make the decision without asking three other people whether it’s the right one. When you create something because it matters rather than because an algorithm tells you it should perform. When you become curious about somebody’s behaviour rather than immediately judging it. When you ask your team what they think before telling them what to do..
Any one of these might seem insignificant, yet taken together, they can reveal something much bigger. That your relationship with yourself may be changing. Your relationship with your work may be changing. Your relationship with uncertainty, authority, creativity or other people may be changing.
You may already be becoming someone new.
Perhaps modern magick is less about controlling the world
Older ideas about magick are often concerned with influence: creating an intended outcome through ritual, intention or unseen causes.
There is something valuable in intention. Knowing what we want to move towards matters. But over time, personal transformation is about so much more than gaining control over everything around us. Afterall, there is so much we cannot control. Stuff like other people. Markets. Organisations. Relationships. Timing. Chance. The decisions made by somebody several layers above us.
What we can develop is our relationship with ourselves while navigating those things. We can become more aware of the meanings we create. We can notice the beliefs shaping our responses. We can become more deliberate about the behaviours we practise. We can examine where our choices are coming from. And sometimes we can discover that we have more agency than we thought.
For us, that is where magick becomes particularly relevant to modern life because it can give us ways of meeting uncertainty more intentionally.
Humanistic magick is one framework for this
This is where our own framework of Humanistic Magick sits.
We don’t see it as an alternative to psychology, coaching, leadership development or other approaches to human growth. It is one way of bringing together psychological understanding, humanistic principles, reflection, symbolism, ritual and intentional practise to support meaningful change.
Within it change can be understood as a movement from fragmentation towards greater integration and we begin by recognising that something no longer fits.
Then comes the work of integration, to be honest this is often the longest and least glamorous part. Where new beliefs, behaviours and ways of relating to ourselves are practised before they feel completely natural.
Eventually, some of what once required conscious effort begins to become our new normal. There is nothing particularly neat about that journey. We can move forwards and backwards. We can feel confident in one context and uncertain in another. We can understand something intellectually long before we can live it comfortably.
That doesn’t mean the work isn’t working. It means we are human.
You may already be somewhere on the path
Perhaps something in your personal life no longer fits.
Perhaps the way you’ve been running your business has become exhausting, but you don’t yet know what a more sustainable version would look like.
Perhaps you’ve reached a point in leadership where being the person with all the answers is no longer the leader you want to be.
Perhaps you have simply started wondering whether there is another way to be.
Recognition matters because before we can consciously change something, we often have to notice that our relationship with it has already begun to shift.
That can be an uncomfortable place to stand but it can also be an important one.
You don’t need to rush towards a new identity just because the old one is becoming uncomfortable. You can pay attention instead.
What feels different?
What are you questioning that you didn’t question before?
Where are your old responses becoming harder to maintain?
What are you doing now that would have surprised an earlier version of you?
What are you becoming more able to tolerate?
Where are you giving yourself permission that you once waited for somebody else to give you?
Those questions might reveal more change than you realise.
So why do we still call it magick?
Because despite all the psychological models, coaching frameworks and theories of human development we can use to explain change, we still find something extraordinary in our capacity to participate consciously in our own becoming.
We can imagine possibilities before we know how to inhabit them. We can use symbols and rituals to give meaning to transitions that are difficult to articulate. We can change the stories we tell about ourselves. We can practise different behaviours. We can learn to notice ourselves. We can create different relationships with uncertainty.
And gradually, sometimes almost imperceptibly, something that once felt impossible can become ordinary.
The boundary becomes easier. The decisions become yours. The creative work begins to sound more like you. The leader stops needing to have every answer. The person in the mirror feels a little more familiar.
You may describe that through psychology. You may understand it through spirituality. You may experience it through coaching, therapy, leadership development or simply living long enough to discover that you are capable of changing.
We use the word magick but you don’t have to.
The language matters less than recognising the change that is already taking place because perhaps the most interesting question is this:
Who are you already becoming, and what evidence of that person can you see?
References
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. It describes change through the Humanistic Magick Integration Path: a developmental movement from fragmentation towards integrated authority.
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