One of the things that impresses me about paganism is taking responsibility for our own actions & the consequences that result from our actions. There's no "devil made me do it" to blame. There's an awareness that the "other guy" won't change so we change ourselves to change the outer circumstances. Simple mirror spells work... Looking into a mirror at ourself.
And it's not ever easy to change ingrained habits of thinking, of feeling, of reacting & of habitually playing the starring role in our own drama. Ive noticed that esoteric thinking reminds us that we play all the parts astrally until we step outside the drama & see it at work & watch it proven over & over.
Stepping outside our own personal drama is the way to see how the roles are played & how they each feed one another as well as feed-off one another. We recognize when our actions either contributed to or detracted from the Whole Performance. Then we can stop the cycle & redirect our own role.
As I see it, we can decide to step back into The Play or step aside at any time. It's when I've temporarily stepped aside that I have actual power to change, as I've experienced it time & again. And using our magical know-how at these times to set intent makes the changes "stick" because we've changed what attracted us to keep doing the same-old-same-old things, even if we aren't fully aware of what they were. Like any actor we've responded to "what's my motivation" & as in magic we sympathetically act out the goal; therefore the role we play moving forward changes for the better.
But tit-for-tat magic just adds fuel to the fire of a failing performance. I'm thinking of the starry-eyed ones who do cook-book spells cold, without even wanting the understanding that comes from just thinking things through for cause & effect. If they stick with it they're quite likely to catch on, bless 'em. The same methods & systems work for anyone who works at it.
I've jawed on long enough
Just wondering how anyone else here sees these things working out in life-experiences.
bb