Secular Magic, A User Manual. Book cover.

Secular Magic

A User Manual

Richard Metron

Ritual as a designed tool, an interface that keeps the mind coherent under pressure. A minimal set of secular practices, about five minutes a day, for skeptics who want depth without metaphysics.

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In a great deal of fiction, from fantasy to anime to games, magic is already secular. It operates as a law of the world, like physics. You study it, train it, apply it. You do not believe in it, you use it ... What this book does is treat ritual as a designed interface between intention and action.

When intention, attention, and behavior line up, change moves through ordinary channels, and it can feel almost uncanny.

Most advice tells you to change your mindset or build habits. Ancient systems told you to perform rituals. Both often fail for the same reason, we say one thing and live another.

Instead of asking what rituals mean, we ask what they do. Instead of asking what to believe, we ask what to repeat.

"Secular Magic, A User Manual" gives you a baseline, intentions that survive pressure, symbols that hold, a behavioral lock without self punishment, and a spellbook of situational rituals you can run when you are scattered, stuck, or overloaded.

How spells are organized, the five elements

The elements are not metaphysical substances. They classify system behaviors in a way that stays usable under stress, when attention is fragmented and the nervous system is loud.

Earth

Stabilizes

When you feel fragile, scattered, or easily disrupted.

Water

Moves

When emotions are stuck, suppressed, or overwhelming.

Fire

Increases

When you are inert, avoidant, or stalled.

Air

Clarifies

When thinking is cloudy, recursive, or stuck.

Void

Removes

When accumulation itself is the problem.

Element

Earth

The Grounding Loop

A predefined ritual pattern that reduces volatility and increases persistence. Use it when the system feels fragile, scattered, or easily disrupted.

Parameters

Use when
anxiety, dissociation, nervous system overload, the sense of not being in your body
Avoid when
you need immediate activation, use Fire later, after stability returns
Duration
2 to 5 minutes
Constraint
slow, weighted, no intensity chasing
Baseline
one symbol of your choosing, one intention, explicit ending

Protocol

  1. Entry Plant both feet and feel three points of contact. Touch something you’ve chosen as your symbol (an object or a gesture). Name your state in one word: overloaded, panicked, or blank.
  2. Action Run a sensory loop: five things you see, four you feel on your body, three you hear, two you smell, one you taste. Let each exhale finish before the next.
  3. Containment Press your hands together, or place one on your sternum and one on your belly. Hold that weight for three breaths.
  4. Closure Say one word—grounded, back, or closed—then do one small physical action: drink water, sit down, or step outside for ten seconds.

Notes

Two minute version Feet planted, 3-2-1 senses, one longer exhale, touch your chosen symbol, then close.

Stop condition You can feel contact and name the next action without urgency.

Failure mode If agitation rises, you are moving too fast. Slow down and shorten the list.

Variation Substitute counting from ten to one if senses feel inaccessible.

Stacking Pairs well with Void after. Avoid Fire until steadiness returns.

The book includes the full spellbook, step by step protocols, design rules, failure modes, and stop criteria.

Intellectual foundation

"Secular Magic, A User Manual" does not claim to invent these ideas. It reorganizes them into a usable structure.

Its foundations include habit formation research (Peter Gollwitzer), cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), nervous system regulation (polyvagal theory), somatic approaches, mindfulness practice, systems theory (Donella Meadows), cybernetics, ritual studies, and pragmatic philosophy.

The elemental structure is borrowed from traditional esoteric systems, stripped of metaphysical claims and treated as psychological technology.

This is not belief. It is behavioral design.

Available in print and Kindle.

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