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As a therapist pursuing advanced postgraduate training in psychoanalysis, I find the discourse surrounding the centrality of “intention” in magical practice baffling.
Literally my job is to work with people day in and day out to try to learn why it is that—despite their best intentions—their life continually goes off the rails in familiar, repetitive ways.
If you believe conscious intention is sufficient to achieve one’s ends, I simply cannot imagine how you even begin to explain why psychopathology in general, let alone self-sabotage, repetition compulsion, addiction, and so forth not only exist, but proliferate.
I suspect that, at root, the supposition that intention is the central or sufficient factor for magical workings is predicated on an implicit denial of the existence and power of the unconscious on the other (not to mention grandiose/omnipotent fantasies to boot).
Intention seems to me to be at best a spark: if there is no proper kindling and fuel, no flame will take. Just so, our damaged relational schemas, implicit learning, and unconscious motives can prevent the seed of intention from taking root even if we have the drive to act on it.
The psyche is complex and to reduce anything—let alone something as subtle as magic—to one factor is probably a losing proposition. Anyway thanks for coming to my TED talk.
