There are many definitions of magic, my personal favourite used to be “the manipulation of co-incidence to fall in your favour”. These days I prefer to think of it not so much as manipulation of coincidence (what is coincidence anyway?) but as creating your own reality; something all of us have the power to do.

When most people think of spells, they think of a recipe of herbs, potions, candles and incense along with the right words, chant or incantation. There are so many books out nowadays that have endless lists of correspondences and spell recipes to help you find wealth, love and happiness that is easy to believe that is all it takes. As long as you have the right colour candle and the right recipe and the right words then it will work. What most of these books fail to mention is that these things are really just props to get you into an altered state of consciousness to allow the real magic ingredient to work – the power of your mind.

There are many ways to change your state to help you achieve the things you want in life, the latest being The Law of Attraction as discussed in “The Secret” along with elements of hypnosis and NLP. I personally do not believe that manifesting what you want by positive visualisation and affirmations and dream boards is any different than casting a spell, it’s just a different method. Anything that enables you to get into a space where you can focus your mind on your intent is a valid tool.
One of the major contributing factors of a spell that works (like any project) is the intent and the focus you put into it (and that includes on the physical realm too). If you think that you can mix a few ingredients and chant a few words from a book without really putting too much thought into it then you will be very disappointed with the results.
What you focus on increases so make that the most important part of any magical work.