So, one of the things I’m doing with the Risky Business course is packing a TON of magical suggestions into it. This is honestly easier in video format than book form because you can talk through the suggestions, and so each video has pages of sigil statements, planetary magic ideas, prayers, and spells.
This has gotten me thinking about the critical kinds of magic we all need to be doing right now. Magic that I’m doing and that I recommend you immediately start doing too — for risk management, but also for life in general (and look around you, all life is actually risk management isn’t it?).
The first of these is road opening. Road opening is one of the MOST powerful enchantments you can do (I’m reminded of this very old blog post over on RuneSoup). For years though I did my road opening “wrong,” and it’s only when I learned a better way that it really started being an enchantment powerhouse for me. Wrong here isn’t “bad magic that didn’t work at all” so much as “limited approach that didn’t give me the best results.” So keep that in mind…
Here’s the typical approach: I want specific thing, I can’t seem to get thing, I should do road opening for thing.
Here’s the better approach: I want options, give me all the fucking options, I road open… for EVERYTHING.
Imagine that you are trekking through a wilderness. Maybe it’s a desert, or a forest, or a mountain valley. It doesn’t matter. You are on the path and, ooops, the path is blocked. Now what? Well, maybe you move the thing blocking it, or maybe you climb over it or maybe you detour around it. Or maybe, and hear me out, you just LEAVE the path entirely. Maybe you just head off cross country.
In fact, calling this road opening might be a misnomer, but we’ll continue to use it because the core techniques are the same. But instead of approaching it with the request of “open this specific path for me” you approach the enchantment with “let all the paths open, let everything be a path, let my steps become the path.” Maybe we should call it bush whacking instead of road opening. You are asking for many roads and you are also asking for the power to make the road.
Now, when you do this, the results can take more work on your part. You have to take responsibility for choosing the best way from the options that present themselves. You also have the responsibility of maybe making your own road entirely. That’s scary, which is why I think we sometimes make this kind of magic so small. “Please open the road to me getting promoted to second assistant manager” is safe and simple. But how much more interesting to just open the doors to ALL THE THINGS. (For those of you in the course, this whole idea ties neatly into the most recent lesson on making choices which starts with an analysis of The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, and it is also referenced in the next lessons on taking chances).
So if you are feeling stuck or hemmed in or like you don’t have good options, consider busting out some road opening and enchanting for straight up optionality.
