Manifestation 101: What Manifestation IS—and What it Isn't
The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Your Reality (a series)
Manifestation is a term that gets thrown around a LOT in the magical, spiritual, and coaching spaces. But it doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. And there are plenty of people who don’t know what it means at all.
So, before we dive into how to manifest, let’s make sure we’re speaking the same language.
What IS Manifestation?
Manifestation is the magic of transmuting* a thought into a reality with little to no conscious effort in between the two.
*Transmutation is one state (in this case, thought) being changed into another form (reality).
Manifesting uses your personal energy and aligns it with what you desire, which accesses the power of the Universe to make that desire a reality.
Manifestation is the path of ease, of trust, of magic.
It’s deciding you want something then trusting the Universe to deliver it to you.
What Manifestation is NOT
Manifestation is not the “muggle” path, or the path of effort, hard work, struggle, or frustration.
It’s not deciding you want something then working hard, grinding, or hustling to get it.
It’s not just hoping for something. It’s not praying for your hopes and wishes to come true. And it’s not forcing, pushing, or wrestling to get what you want.
Subtle but Important Differences: Hopes, Wishes, Prayer, and Spells
What’s the difference between manifestation magic and hopes, prayer, making wishes, or doing spell work? And why does it matter?
These are all ways to achieve what you want, but they are not all equally powerful or reliable. We’ll start with the least dependable way and work our way up.
Before we dive into the differences, I want to introduce you to the emotional scale (below), originally developed by Abraham Hicks, for a visual understanding of the differences we’re about to explore.
The scale reflects the scale of human emotions from our deepest despair to our highest freedom. As you move up the scale, your frequency or “vibe” increases and expands. You feel lighter. As you move down the scale, the reverse is true: your frequency and vibe lower; it feels heavier and darker.
Refer back to this image as we go through the different methods of achieving what you want.
Hoping
While hoping is on the positive end of the emotional scale spectrum, it’s on the low end of the positive side.
Find “hopefulness” on the scale, in the dark green, just above contentment, as the color starts to turn to blue.
Think about when you hope for something. It’s not exactly a high vibe energy. It feels like you have absolutely no power over whether or not it will happen. It will be great if it does, but you don’t really allow yourself to believe it will come to fruition.
Wishing
Wishing is definitely lighter than hoping. It has a playfulness to it. More of a “this could really happen” energy.
Wishing is aligned with the energy of “optimism” on the scale, in the dark green, just barely above the center and past the tipping point from negative to positive.
Think about what it feels like when you make a wish.
For adults, this rarely tends to happen, but we do encourage each other to make a wish when we blow out the candles on our birthday cake! It feels better than just hoping, doesn’t it? It feels fun. You feel lucky and optimistic.
Fun fact: Astrologically speaking, you are literally luckier on and around your birthday and blowing out the candle is a form of candle magic.
So, in terms of turning dreams into reality, wishing is better than hoping. But it is still out of our hands. We make a wish and see what happens, probably not expecting anything either way.
Praying
The energy of praying varies depending on the belief level of the person doing the praying. It can be aligned with hopefulness or optimism, like hopes and wishes discussed above. But it can also be at a higher level, of positive expectation or belief.
Praying can range from “hopefulness”, “optimism,” to “positive expectation or belief” depending on the belief level of the person praying.
When prayers are made from the higher level, of positive expectation or belief, results may be a bit more reliable from the lower levels. However, the outcome is still completely out of your hands. With prayer, we “give it to God.” There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not exactly empowering. You’re at the mercy of whether or not someone else heard and will answer your prayer.
Spell Work
Like prayer, the energy of casting spells varies depending on the state and belief of the practitioner.
Casting spells covers the same span as prayer for beginner practitioners who don’t yet have belief under their belt (between hopefulness and optimism).
Casting spells energy varies widely depending on the state and belief of the practitioner. It can be as low as “hopefulness” and as high as “empowerment”, which is the second to highest level of the emotional scale.
For more experienced, magickal practitioners (namely witches), the range starts where prayer leaves off, at positive expectation and belief and ranging up to working from a place of feeling empowered. From this level of creation, outcomes and results can be much more reliable!
What Makes Manifestation Different
True manifestation starts at the top level where spell craft leaves us, from empowerment. As a beginner manifester, it’s completely natural to start off at hopefulness and optimism. But, as you start to see results, your belief builds, until you reach the apex of empowerment.
Beginning manifesters may start at the low end of “hopefulness” and “optimism”, while expert manifesters tend to be at the level of “empowered”.
The main difference between manifestation and hoping, wishing, and praying, then is that we take the power in our own hands. We know we will receive what we want, if we align our energy with what we want properly. It’s not up to God, Source, the Universe. We know that if our energy is right, we’ll receive what we want.
So what’s the difference between manifestation and high level spell work, then? The difference is not in the energy we’re coming from necessarily. It’s more about what we do or don’t do.
With spell work, the belief lies partly in doing the spell.
With manifestation, no spell is needed.
Therefore, the simplest, most reliable way to create the reality you desire is through manifestation.
That concludes Part 1 of the Manifestation 101 series for beginners. Subscribe to be notified of when the next article drops!
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What a beautiful way to navigate Abraham’s emotional guidance scale with the overlays of what our actions in manifestation are (so to speak). You provided me with such clarity this evening on something I’ve been a little cloudy on. Thank you so much for navigating us all through this. The journey was delightful and can’t wait for the next post! 🙏✨