Last week I was talking with one of my magical witch sisters about magic (and I’m so very grateful that I have magical witch sisters to talk magic with!).
This idea came up that I was calling ‘a forcing function.’ A forcing function is when something comes along that forces you to take some kind of action. It might be positive or negative, but the point is that it pressures you to do something. For example, let’s say you have been considering trading in your beater for a more reliable vehicle. You might waffle about what you want and how much you want to spend forever… until your old car breaks down. Now you have to decide, and you need to do it quick. Your hand has been forced.
Forcing functions come up in magic and can be one of the things responsible for that occasional Monkey’s Paw result you get when you enchant. So the kind of thing where you do a spell for more time to work on your art… and then get fired. Poof, way more time for art! Or you enchant for more opportunities to travel and then your rent triples, forcing you to move.
Forcing functions are related to unintended consequences, but they put the responsibility for the action back on you. So, if you enchant for money and your shed burns down, giving you an insurance payout… that’s an unintended consequence. If you want to be out from your shitty slumlord lease and your apartment catches fire? That’s a forcing function.
This is also known as the universe being a bit of an asshole.
The trick with a magical forcing function is that, since you originally did the enchantment, not leaning in and taking advantage of it can be really problematic. One of my personal maxims is “Don’t shit on your luck” (and I should add this to my list of personal maxims now that I’m thinking about it). When you ask for help with something and that help appears, you shouldn’t turn it down. When you enchant for a certain results and then that result happens, you don’t want to not engage with it. This is surprisingly hard! Sometimes we really do want something, but then it happens and we’re like “no, not like that!”
There are a host of reasons you can get that kind of magical result, including not being clear about what you really want, ancestral baggage or old contracts, blocks/impedance/malefica, shadow work, your spirits/Gods/universe really knowing better than you and wanting you to just listen to them. But there are two ways that forcing functions (and unintended consequences of all kinds) can happen just through mistargeting:
First, you didn’t give your enchantment any kind of road or target. So if you want more money, but you don’t have a side hustle or flexible income or anything to sell… well, that’s when you risk something unpleasant happening to get money to you. Or if you want to meet new people and enchant for that, but you continue to live the life of a hermit… well, the universe is going to do the best it can to find you some people, but the weird dudes at the bus station may not have been what you were hoping for.
A lot of practical manifestation enchantment comes with a side of chaos baked in, and if you don’t have a useful place for that chaos to act, it can upset things you’d rather not upset (that said, life itself is full of chaos and sometimes shit’s getting upset no matter what, so you may as well lean in). Consider the example of wanting more time to work on your art. If you rearrange your work schedule to give you Thursdays off and then enchant for really productive and creative Thursdays… well, you’ve given your enchantment a place to go. Or maybe you go at the result sideways, enchanting for a lucrative independent contract gig or a cheaper housing situation you could pay for working part time or winning an arts grant… all of which come with the side benefit of focused art time.
Second, maybe there isn’t a non-sucky option for getting what you want, hence not really being able to move forward without a lot of trouble and pain. Add a little enchantment and the universe is going to look at the options and be like, “well, this one is maybe the least sucky? At least the result will happen the fastest!” This is the kind of forcing function where what you want is a smooth, easy path to a result… but the best you can hope for is slightly less terrible than the alternative. Maybe the actual best result is declaring bankruptcy and letting the bank take the house… which, well, no one wants that, but plenty of people have gone through it and survived just fine.
This is a place of degrees of disadvantage and sometimes your best bet is prayer (of the ‘let go and let God’ variety) or asking for a miracle. That said, if you know of practical things that can make the suck easier, however and whenever it happens, maybe just enchant for that. For example, let’s say you need to untangle from a messy and toxic business partnership. No matter how it works out, it’s going to be unpleasant and expensive. So maybe you enchant for a new opportunity so that you can at least pay the bills during the unpleasantness. Or you do magic for outside networking or well-positioned allies.
That said, sometimes you really do need to rip off the band aid. There’s a magical framework in my Risk Management course calling ‘smashing butterflies’ that’s all about the right way to let something that’s very fragile and sucking all your energy just crash and burn. That working exists because sometimes the universe is right, and fucking the fuck right off is your best way forward — even if it’s hard in the near term.
And even prayer doesn’t protect you from shit happening (exhibit A, Job, poor bastard). If you honestly prayed “Goddess, please help me get out of this situation for highest good of all and for best out come for my family” and the path to that is straight through hell… well, straight through hell you go. Maybe instead pray that as you go through this hard but necessary time that you a) be granted the courage and fortitude to make that journey b) have your kids/family/elderly mother/innocent bystanders be safe and protected or c) that the end result be worth the suffering.
This isn’t to discourage anyone from doing magic. I’m all about doing more magic! But we need to be smart about what we target and how we want results to land.
