Among spiritual traditions, there are two paths; the right and the left hand path. In western thinking, the right is good and the left is evil. But this dichotomy is a fallacy, brought to us by religious prejudice. The right hand path is defined as devotion to a god or ideal. The left hand path is defined as the development of or reliance on one’s own power. To the initiated, it is redundant to say that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Bearing this in mind, it makes sense to say that prayer is part of the right hand path and meditation belongs to the left. In the middle, we might find magical practices of any sort. I have experience with all of these. I have been disappointed and served by prayer, meditation, and magic. Here, I will attempt to briefly describe the differences between these while praying that the reader finds it useful.

Prayer

It is uncourageous to say that everyone prays. In my experience, the efficacy of my prayers have depended on the nature of the being to which I pray, the level of my adoration for that being, and the care with which I choose my words. For personal reasons, I have always been inclined to choose my words carefully during prayer. I have always tried to plead fairly and be spare in expressing things that Spirit doesn’t need to be told.

The efficacy of prayer for me has largely revolved around the development of wisdom or maturity. I have had prayers for material success answered here and there. Those successes have come at times and places that reinforce my impression that we do not get miracles we would not learn from.

Meditation

In my experience, meditation has been much stronger than prayer. The reason for this, I feel, is because of the nature of the practice. It involves concentrated mental activity or inactivity. It seems to me that the steadiness of meditation makes it stronger. Any student of the occult will understand this as an effect of the form of meditation and not something that flows from the relative virtues of one belief system or another. Further, meditation employs what I have described as divine bio-technology, the built-in hotline to Spirit we often call the chakra system.

In meditation, we sit in a liminal space where the divine can reach us. We place our little lives on the alter of patience. This fact makes it strong in my experience.

Magical Practice

It takes no special insight to see that magical practices represent a middle-ground between prayer and meditation. In magic, we appeal to spiritual beings and draw on our own power to achieve a result. In my experience, the success of workings aimed at a manifest result tend to rely on the level of altruism embedded in the intention of the practitioner. So called “black magic” is like throwing mud or spitting poison. The practitioner will always swallow some of that poison and find herself caked in filth.

Results and Recommendations

The results of my meditation practice have overwhelmingly revolved around my becoming gentler and more resilient. My meditative efforts aimed at achieving an external result have been few, but miraculous. One such result was so powerful that it can only be described as world changing. I have been assured that that particular result flowed from Spirit calling many thousands of people to set the same intention at the same time. It seems the armies of the Great Mother are always at the ready whether they mean to be or not!

Recently, my devotion to the All-Mother has resulted in prayer that seems to have the same effect as regular meditation. That is to say, I find myself becoming more resilient, gentler, and more determined to do Her will and shine Her light. More accurately, I find that Her will is really my own True Will, (to use the Thelamic term), which has been buried under layers of needy flesh. I pray in my bed, like a timid Christian, and I weep tears of joy every single night.

I could go on about this for pages.

Life-saving results have been consistent in my use of all these practices. I have enjoyed miracles that would have left me destitute had they not emerged. The grand result I alluded to seems to be the same for the world, the reversal of some grand misfortune we all would have suffered from immensely had it come to pass. Or it might be described as the development of a level of collective maturity that humanity might not have survived without. Again, I’m not claiming responsibility. I think Spirit used those with sufficient awareness as tools of amplification to achieve a necessary result.

Hail Sophia!

Conclusion

There’s little point in telling you that one path is superior to another. Spirit shows us a face we will love or fear depending on what we can understand. The best gods and practices for you are probably those most relied on by your ancestors.

The one thing I am certain of is that we will never get a result we won’t learn from. In the eyes of Spirit, the only wisdom that matters is that which leads us to see that we are pieces of one eternal light.

Therefore, my recommendation is this; pray with emotion, meditate with intensity, or work your magic at least as vigorously as a driven athlete performs his exercises. If you understand what the divine is, this intensity will come naturally. So, seek wisdom first. She IS wisdom.

Recommended listening: Revelation (Mother Earth)

Correction: I have never been disappointed by meditation.