Is there a category of magic based on buying lottery tickets for things other than winning the lottery?
This week I bought a pair of lottery tickets and spent some time fantasizing about what exactly I would do if I won payouts of various sizes. As I did so, I 'felt' a question that boiled down to "Hey kid, you wanna win the lottery, or do you wanna be lucky?" After thinking about it, I answered I'd rather be lucky.
My tickets came back without a single number matched across 10 plays. However, I felt a burst of energy that helped me see a few things I wanted to change around the house, sort out a few things about my job, a deity I have an on again off again relationship with called me up, and to top it all off I thought of someone who might want a piece of junk collecting dust on my shelf and they agreed to take it off my hands for a small amount that was still a lot more than I've ever won in the lottery!
Thinking back, I also remember a similar situation a few years ago when I bought a ticket and tried using an affirmation I made up for non-specific 'luck' but with the expectation that the luck would come as lottery winnings. When I got home from getting the ticket, the kitchen pipes had broken at my rental, which ended up being the last straw that got me to buckle down and break myself out of that living arrangement and go somewhere better. I didn't win anything of consequence from the ticket, and it took a lot of work to dig myself out of the hole, but looking back, that was a lucky misfortune all things considered.
I've been thinking about what's happened and I'm a bit on the fence about this entity. The 'luck' is coming in the form of me seeing ways to do extra work and realizing my capability to do the extra work. At the very least, the force feels more balanced than imbalanced. However, shortly after, I had a few visions of a spirit I work with being accosted with a disembodied hand with a knife. It was easily turned aside and the spirit laughed at the assault, but it was still a new bad thing that came along with all the good stuff.
Regardless, I'm concerned about the ethics. While my tickets were just letting the machine pick the numbers, the 'deal' seems to be "these numbers will win nothing, but you'll get alternate fortune." There could theoretically be other people who have the same numbers and therefore necessarily cannot win now either. I can't be sure if they're getting compensated equally, or if they were equally approached, or if the potential number space is so large I don't really need to worry about duplicating someone else's winning draw, but it reminds me of Ender's Game where Ender mentions the setting's warp drives use so little power that he's worried he'll look out the window and see the stars going out since there's no such thing as a free lunch. I don't think a bit of life reshuffling is going to put out the sun, of course, but I'm still cognizant I'm part of a system that I can't keep track of and there's a subtle connection to be aware of that I'm not sure what to do with.
This also suggests the entity and the knife may be two separate things. I seem to recall you mentioning a long time ago that there's a lot of "give me the jackpot" lottery magic floating around to the point that it cancels itself out, and perhaps by agreeing to give up my share of luck, I've crossed someone with incidentally similar numbers and drawn some sort of reprisal conscious or not. Perhaps the voice was even a comedically ill-advised attempt at "stealing" my lottery luck that backfired through shared numbers - if someone bought a ticket and cast such a spell with the ticket involved, the shared numbers would provide an obvious link between us which could have been monkey wrenched by some other entity who walked away laughing and tipped me some luck for my unwitting involvement. Might have to divinate on that.
Regardless, I have my doubts that this type of magic is repeatable. I think it works by starting with the expectation and fantasy of Fortuna Minor and giving it up via spiritual intercession for Fortuna Major, which you then ground out in your life for whatever small but sure profits you can manage. Might be in the same category as a green candle spell. However, if I go in intentionally seeking Fortuna Major, there's nothing really being given up since I wouldn't be sincerely charging my illusion of winning to be sacrificed and the odds of winning themselves are so low in the first place that the material value of not winning is negligible. Also, Fortuna Major is always all around you, so why go out of your way wasting good money on the ticket if your desired result is gains through personal effort?
And, of course, I know Discworld is just a novel, but I feel there's also a grain of truth in that bit where all efforts to call up Lady Luck on command fail messily because that's not how luck works.
I'm thinking that sorting through all the fantasies of winning in meditation might be a more ethical and repeatable means of lottery 'luck' magic. The illusion of all the winnings feels like it compartmentalizes life changing success behind a passive one in a million chance the same way fantasy novels compartmentalize being exceptional behind bloodline or innate "specialness" - you can't be cool until an inciting incident which you may not be qualified for in the first place. Sorting through the illusion to pick out what one really wants and then drawing a line of causation from one's present life to something small and attainable that gives a bit of whatever the fantasy fulfills might bring similar fortune to this Unwinning the Lottery-mancy in a cheaper, more repeatable, package. Granted, I doubt I would have thought of some of the knock-on effects I experienced, and some of the fortune I received was synchronicity based, so they're subtly different spells.
So 1) Is using lottery tickets this way an established form of magic? It feels like something Hoodoo might have experimented with.
2) What is your take on the ethics of the lottery number entanglement situation?
3a) Is a balanced result from a working an indicator of a balanced force behind it, or does one still have to be on one's toes?
3b) Does the knife and voice being separate theory have legs?
4) How grubby is all this lottery magic anyhow? I play the lottery for a bit of sport when the jackpot goes to the moon in the sprit of probable loss but all in good fun with at least a few dollars going to fund social projects, but the more I imagine the astral situation around the lottery with all the greed and desperation, the more my imagination slides towards the maelstrom of Dante's 2nd Circle of Hell or worse.
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branchandroot
Lottery Magic For Not Winning The Lottery
Date: 2023-07-24 04:40 am (UTC)This week I bought a pair of lottery tickets and spent some time fantasizing about what exactly I would do if I won payouts of various sizes. As I did so, I 'felt' a question that boiled down to "Hey kid, you wanna win the lottery, or do you wanna be lucky?" After thinking about it, I answered I'd rather be lucky.
My tickets came back without a single number matched across 10 plays. However, I felt a burst of energy that helped me see a few things I wanted to change around the house, sort out a few things about my job, a deity I have an on again off again relationship with called me up, and to top it all off I thought of someone who might want a piece of junk collecting dust on my shelf and they agreed to take it off my hands for a small amount that was still a lot more than I've ever won in the lottery!
Thinking back, I also remember a similar situation a few years ago when I bought a ticket and tried using an affirmation I made up for non-specific 'luck' but with the expectation that the luck would come as lottery winnings. When I got home from getting the ticket, the kitchen pipes had broken at my rental, which ended up being the last straw that got me to buckle down and break myself out of that living arrangement and go somewhere better. I didn't win anything of consequence from the ticket, and it took a lot of work to dig myself out of the hole, but looking back, that was a lucky misfortune all things considered.
I've been thinking about what's happened and I'm a bit on the fence about this entity. The 'luck' is coming in the form of me seeing ways to do extra work and realizing my capability to do the extra work. At the very least, the force feels more balanced than imbalanced. However, shortly after, I had a few visions of a spirit I work with being accosted with a disembodied hand with a knife. It was easily turned aside and the spirit laughed at the assault, but it was still a new bad thing that came along with all the good stuff.
Regardless, I'm concerned about the ethics. While my tickets were just letting the machine pick the numbers, the 'deal' seems to be "these numbers will win nothing, but you'll get alternate fortune." There could theoretically be other people who have the same numbers and therefore necessarily cannot win now either. I can't be sure if they're getting compensated equally, or if they were equally approached, or if the potential number space is so large I don't really need to worry about duplicating someone else's winning draw, but it reminds me of Ender's Game where Ender mentions the setting's warp drives use so little power that he's worried he'll look out the window and see the stars going out since there's no such thing as a free lunch. I don't think a bit of life reshuffling is going to put out the sun, of course, but I'm still cognizant I'm part of a system that I can't keep track of and there's a subtle connection to be aware of that I'm not sure what to do with.
This also suggests the entity and the knife may be two separate things. I seem to recall you mentioning a long time ago that there's a lot of "give me the jackpot" lottery magic floating around to the point that it cancels itself out, and perhaps by agreeing to give up my share of luck, I've crossed someone with incidentally similar numbers and drawn some sort of reprisal conscious or not. Perhaps the voice was even a comedically ill-advised attempt at "stealing" my lottery luck that backfired through shared numbers - if someone bought a ticket and cast such a spell with the ticket involved, the shared numbers would provide an obvious link between us which could have been monkey wrenched by some other entity who walked away laughing and tipped me some luck for my unwitting involvement. Might have to divinate on that.
Regardless, I have my doubts that this type of magic is repeatable. I think it works by starting with the expectation and fantasy of Fortuna Minor and giving it up via spiritual intercession for Fortuna Major, which you then ground out in your life for whatever small but sure profits you can manage. Might be in the same category as a green candle spell. However, if I go in intentionally seeking Fortuna Major, there's nothing really being given up since I wouldn't be sincerely charging my illusion of winning to be sacrificed and the odds of winning themselves are so low in the first place that the material value of not winning is negligible. Also, Fortuna Major is always all around you, so why go out of your way wasting good money on the ticket if your desired result is gains through personal effort?
And, of course, I know Discworld is just a novel, but I feel there's also a grain of truth in that bit where all efforts to call up Lady Luck on command fail messily because that's not how luck works.
I'm thinking that sorting through all the fantasies of winning in meditation might be a more ethical and repeatable means of lottery 'luck' magic. The illusion of all the winnings feels like it compartmentalizes life changing success behind a passive one in a million chance the same way fantasy novels compartmentalize being exceptional behind bloodline or innate "specialness" - you can't be cool until an inciting incident which you may not be qualified for in the first place. Sorting through the illusion to pick out what one really wants and then drawing a line of causation from one's present life to something small and attainable that gives a bit of whatever the fantasy fulfills might bring similar fortune to this Unwinning the Lottery-mancy in a cheaper, more repeatable, package. Granted, I doubt I would have thought of some of the knock-on effects I experienced, and some of the fortune I received was synchronicity based, so they're subtly different spells.
So 1) Is using lottery tickets this way an established form of magic? It feels like something Hoodoo might have experimented with.
2) What is your take on the ethics of the lottery number entanglement situation?
3a) Is a balanced result from a working an indicator of a balanced force behind it, or does one still have to be on one's toes?
3b) Does the knife and voice being separate theory have legs?
4) How grubby is all this lottery magic anyhow? I play the lottery for a bit of sport when the jackpot goes to the moon in the sprit of probable loss but all in good fun with at least a few dollars going to fund social projects, but the more I imagine the astral situation around the lottery with all the greed and desperation, the more my imagination slides towards the maelstrom of Dante's 2nd Circle of Hell or worse.