Every beginner arrives at this crossroad sooner or later and the Temple hopes to provide this resource to aid those at the start of their journey into magick practice.
Practitioners have been answering this questions in different ways for thousands of years, and even today no consensus has been reached. Some say spirits, some say energy, some say correspondences link the link the planets to the metals and the metals to the herbs, some say the mind and nothing beyond the mind. Each answer is a school of magick that provides a working explanation for what we do and why we do it - depending on which we follow.
In this guide, we will walk through the five major schools of magick and show what each one offers a beginner, and explain how the Temple uses them. By the end, you will have a clearer map of the territory, as a well as a method for choosing the school of magick that serves you best. To preface, remember that magick is a personal journey, no no model is treated as the source of truth, only a path. And you may choose one or many.
There is no reason that you cannot choose, and choose again.
What is a School of Magick?
A school is a tradition of craft. Think of the world's kitchens. French cooking, Japanese cooking, and Ethopian cooking each have their own techniques, ingredients, and philosophy. The French chef reduces a sauce for hours, a Japanese chef honors the single perfect ingredient, and the Ethiopian chef layers spices over days. Each school explains how good food happens and each trains its students in particular way. Nobody argues the one school owns the truth about cooking when we sit down for a meal that reaches the table, and good cooks borrow freely across schools.
Schools of Magick work the same way. Each one offers an answer to a very large question (why do rituals produce effects?) along with a method for acting on it. Each one teaches certain techniques and leaves others in the background, and each one can be practiced honestly without claiming to be the final truth about the universe.
This matters for beginners because the first stumbling block in Magick is often the metaphysics. Many of us come to the craft from secular backgrounds, skepticism, or from religions we left in the past. We want to practice, but we also want to stay true to ourselves. Schools let us do both. We can study one, use it, record what happens, and set it down again,
The Temple of Night's sixth tenet, Open Belief, says we judge belief by what it does and each member's metaphysics are their own. A school of magick is one of the clearest place to practice that tenet.
School One: The Spirit School
This is by far the oldest school in the world, which says that magick works through relationship with unseen beings. These beings may be gods, ancestors, land spirits, angels, demons, or even the dead. The spirit practitioner's method often involves asks, offers, bargains, and honors. The rite for a spirit practitioner is a conversation with a spirit, and the result depends on the response to that conversation.
This school of magick runs through nearly every religious and magick tradition on record. From ancient temples to medieval grimoires, folk charms, and modern devotional paths, all these paths rests on it. If you have ever lit a candle for a deity or spoken to the sea before a hard journey, you have already stood inside the spirit school of magick.
Here is what it offers to beginners:
- Warmth and companionship: The practice has a someone in it
- A built-in ethic of respect: It is required that we treat the beings we work with care
- Rich history: Countless stories, images, grimoires, churches, temples, etc. all exist to facilitate this school
In the Temple of Night, Nyx stands as our single representative deity, honored as a deity, archetype, or metaphor, depending on the member. That gives the spirit school a home among us without requiring anyone to adopt it.
Note: This school of magick can lead a practitioner to give their agency, waiting on a spirit to act when they could act themselves. This school of magick is also hard to test, and we need honesty about the difference between what we experience and what we can show. This note pertains to skeptical witches, secular tarot practitioners, and scientifically-minded occultists, but all should contemplate this difference.
School Two: The Energy School
The energy school says that magick works by raising, channeling, and directing a subtle force. It goes by many names such as prana, qi, mana, od, the astral light, or even simply, 'power.' The practitioner gathers it through breath, movement, chant, visualization, meditation, charging of an object, and sends it toward a goal. If you have ever felt a room 'charge' before or during ritual or described someone as having 'good energy' or 'low energy' you the language. Many popular movements such as New Age movement, Starseeds, and witchcraft teach through this school with exercises such as grounding, centering, and shielding.
What it offers beginners:
- A practical, popular, hands-on vocabulary: We all can do something with energy. It is fundamentally simple to understand
- A clear structure for rituals: Most rituals involve three steps (gather, shape, release)
- Physicality: Sensations to pay attention to which builds awareness of the body and the surrounding world
Even a practitioner who sets metaphysics aside can find that 'raising energy' is a useful description of what happens physiologically. Practitioners report breathing deepens, heart rate rises, attention focuses, emotion intensifies, and connection increases. Things to consider are that the existence of a measurable energy outside the body has not been demonstrated scientifically, and the vocabulary is often vague, so athough the language is rich, it may explain nothing.
School Three: The Correspondence School
The correspondence school says the world is woven from patterns that echo each other. The old Hermetic saying, 'as above, so below,' captures the idea. The planets, the days of the week, the metals, the herbs, the colors, the notes of the musical scale, and the parts of the body all belong to families. Through working with one member of a family, we can reach the others.
This school built the great Western magical systems. The Renaissance writer Agrippa organized an enormous catalogue of correspondences. The Golden Dawn, an influential magical order of the nineteenth century, turned them into tables a student could memorize and use. Modern herbal magick, crystal work, and tarot all lean on the same logic - although there are differences.
This is what it offers beginners:
- Ready-Made Tools: If you want courage, the tables suggest fire, Mars, cinnamon, and iron
- A Meaningful World: Seen through this lens the entire cosmos is interconnected
- Robustness: There is virtually endless material for study which suits curious minds
The correspondence school of magick has a strong psychological reading as well, which suits the next school we will cover - the psychological school. This is because symbols compress meaning and a personal set of associations works like a private language for the unconscious. When we build our own correspondences, such as a red candle means 'courage' to us because we decided it would. That decision becomes the working and deliberately crafted and meaningful life.
Note: Not all sources agree on meanings or families. One book may assign a plant to Venus and another the same plant to the Moon. It can confuse a practitioner and memorizing tables can feel like homework to some.
School Four: The Psychological Model
The psychological school says that magick works through the mind and body. Imagination, ritual, symbol, story and narrative all change how we perceive, feel, and behave. Those changes then alter the lives we lead which then changes the world we experience. The benefit of the psychological model is that it requires no outside force, since the rite acts on the practitioner. This view has a long history among occultists themselves.
Twentieth century writers such as Israel Regardie, who trained as a psychotherapist, argued that magick practice and psychology describe the same territory. Aleister Crowley, who defined magick as, 'the Science and Art of causing Change in conformity with Will,' also noted that the spirits of the old grimoires could be understood as parts of the human mind. Carl Jung's work on archetypes gave the school a modern vocabulary - although not all psychologists or occultists agree with any of these men, of course.
However, research from psychology supports the main mechanisms. Expectation shapes experience, which is why placebos produce real changes in how people feel, and can heal, even when the person knows they are being given placebo. Ritual reduces anxiety and improves performance, and in studies of athletes, musicians, and people facing loss scientists have found it works. Additionally, narrative identity shapes behavior, since people who describe themselves as resilient tend to meet setback differently. Visualizing an action activates some of the same brain systems as performing it, improving results.
None of this proves any metaphysical claim at all, and we do not offer it as a final proof, although the Temple primarily practices within this school of magick.
What it offers beginners
- Honesty: Every claim can be tested against your own life
- Safety: The practitioner stays in charge and no unseen being has be trusted
- Compatibility: Fits the modern secular life and science
The Temple of Night's canon rests primarily on this school. Liber Noctis states that Magick is, 'the Science and Art of causing Change in conformity with Will,' but Will is not the True Will of Crowley, although we honor his definition. We believe Will is chosen, and can be chosen again. Through the Four Instruments (Imagination, Symbol, Ritual, and Narrative) every rite is built.
Note: It can feel less enchanted at first, though many practitioners find that understanding the mechanism deepens the wonder. This path requires work and follow-through. A rite changes nothing until we act on it.
School Five: The Chaos School
The fifth and final school we cover here arose in the late twentieth century. Writers such as Peter J. Carroll whose book, Liber Null appeared in 1978, proposed that belief itself is a tool. The chaos approach says that no single school is correct, and a practitioner can adopt whichever one produces results in a given moment. Need a spirit encounter? Simply adopt the spirit school fully for the duration of the rite. Need to raise energy? Switch to the energy school. When the work ends, step back out. This is sometimes called, 'paradigm shifting.' It treats belief as a garment we can change, whenever we need it.
What it offers beginners
- Freedom: You are not locked into any one worldview
- Pragmatic: The only judgment here is: did it work?
- Space: Room for experimentation and play
The chaos school fits neatly beside the psychological school, as both as us to judge a frame by its effects. However, a couple of things to watch for: constant switching can leave us shallow if we never sit with one school long enough to learn from it. If you struggle with identity, it can be difficult to practice without a solid sense of self underneath the changing beliefs.
Which School Is Right for You?
The honest answer is that the right school is the one that helps you stay consistent, practice well, and remain honest. It's a simple as that. You are never locked in to any school. You are free to choose, and choose again.
Experiment: Test Two Schools
The best way to learn about schools is to use them. Below we provide a simple method any beginner can follow with a grimoire and a week of evenings. If you have questions about grimoires and how to set up and use them, go here.
Step One — State an intention
Choose something small and real, such as feeling calmer during the morning commute. Write it down in one plain sentence.
Step Two — Record a baseline
For three days, note how you feel, what you notice, and what you do. This is your starting point.
Step Three — Work under the first school
Perform a short rite using the energy school (for example). Breathe, gather a sense of warmth in your hands, place it on a small object, and carry the object with you.
Step Four — Record the effect
Write down what followed that day and the next
Step Five — Work under the second school
Several days later, or the following week, perform a rite for the same intention under the psychological school (for example). Spend five minutes visualizing yourself moving through the commute calm and steady. Trace a simple sigil, and write one sentence about the person you are becoming.
Step Six — Compare
Which rite felt more natural? Which left a longer-lasting, positive effect? Keep what works, revise or retire what doesn't.
How the Temple of Night Uses Schools
We build our practice on the psychological school in conjunction with the essential elements of several others. We welcome every other school in the circle. A member who feels the presence of a spirit and a member who sees only the mind at work can complete the same rite side by side. The Book of the Rite gives both of the same framework (Intention, Symbolization, Ritualization, Integration, and Reflection). The frame holds no matter which school sits underneath it. This is our answer to the question of how magick works. We say that rites change people, that people change the lives they live, and that we can watch the changes happen and ripple out. What each practitioner believes about the deeper reasons remains their own to decide.
In Tenebris, Lux
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to believe in spirits to practice magick?
No. The psychological and chaos schools work without them (and with them), and the Temple of Night requires no profession of any belief in any god or spirit.
Can I use more than one school?
Yes. Many practitioners combine schools or choose one for each kind of work.
Is the psychological school less 'real' magick?
It describes real effects on lives, which what we measure. Many practitioners find it the most demanding school, because it asks us to take responsibility for the change
Which schools did the old adepts follow?
Mostly the spirit and correspondence school, although writers throughout history have noted the role of the mind. The schools have always overlapped.
What should I read next?
Start with a notebook. Then explore the other beginner guides on this site, including our posts on the cosmic calendar and meditation for magick.