Affirmation · “The Subconscious Says Yes”
Choosing a Magical Motto
To craft a short personal motto/name expressing one’s highest aspiration, and to use it as a self-defining, attention-arresting reminder of who one intends to become — an identity-level affirmation.
Magical motto in 5 lines: Sit and ask who you most deeply intend to become. Distil it to one short, resonant phrase or word — in your own words, emotionally charged. Test it: does saying it jolt you awake the way your own name does? If yes, adopt it in a deliberate moment (a small self-initiation). Then use it — invoke it, sign with it, return to it — and renew it as you grow.
What it is
A magical motto is a short phrase or name — traditionally in Latin or another resonant language, but in DuQuette’s hands plainly your own — that states the deepest aspiration you are orienting your life toward.
In the Golden Dawn and Thelemic traditions one takes such a motto on initiation (Crowley’s “Perdurabo,” “I will endure to the end,” is the famous example). DuQuette’s distinctive teaching is psychological and humane: the motto is not cosmic paperwork but a wake-up device.
As he puts it, “The sound of your own name wakes you up, and that’s precisely what a magical motto should do.” It is, in effect, an identity-level affirmation you author for yourself.
The Method
- Clarify your highest aim. Sit quietly and ask what you most deeply aspire to become — not what you want to have, but who you intend to be at your best. DuQuette frames the magical life as integrating the magical and mundane into one whole, so the aim should fit your actual life, not a fantasy self.
- Distil it into a short phrase or single resonant word. Examples in the tradition are terse and verb-like: an enduring quality, a vow, a direction (“I will endure,” “Light in extension,” “Love is the law”). Brevity matters — it must be sayable in a breath.
- Make it personal and felt, not borrowed. Don’t lift someone else’s motto. The test is emotional: does saying it create a small jolt of recognition and resolve? That jolt is the point — the name must wake you up the way hearing your own name across a room does.
- Optionally render it in a language or form that resonates (Latin, Hebrew, Enochian, English) — DuQuette is relaxed about this; resonance and meaning matter more than tradition-policing.
- Adopt it in a deliberate moment. In Homemade Magick this pairs with a self-initiation — a simple, self-authored ritual marking “the beginning of a change,” in which you formally take the motto. The ceremony’s job is to make the choice feel real and irreversible to you. (DuQuette holds that all true initiations are self-initiations.)
- Use it as an ongoing reminder. Sign workings with it, recall it at the start of practice, return to it when you drift from your aim. Each use re-asserts the chosen identity (The Inner Creates the Outer). Let it evolve: a motto can be outgrown and renewed as you change. (Sourcing note: the “sound of your own name wakes you up” line and the self-initiation framing — “the beginning of a change. a different person from the one who entered,” and “all true initiations are self-initiations” — are DuQuette’s in Homemade Magick (short quotations marked). The distil-and-adopt steps are faithful paraphrase of his approach plus the standard Golden Dawn motto custom he is working within. No long reproduction.)
Source & Lineage
The motto custom comes from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where each member took a Latin motto on entry, carried into Thelema by Crowley. DuQuette (b. 1948) → democratises it in Homemade Magick (2014), stripping out gatekeeping: you can choose and take your own motto at the kitchen table, and the meaning is psychological as much as ceremonial.
The Traditions' versions
Golden Dawn / Thelemic motto — the parent custom; a vow-name taken at initiation.
- Affirmations (New Thought) — first-person present-tense self-statements of identity; the motto is the condensed, named form.
- Identity-based habits — “decide the type of person you wish to be, then prove it”; the motto names that person.
- Religious/monastic name-taking — adopting a new name to mark a new self (confirmation names, dharma names, ordination names).
- Personal mantra / mission statement — a one-line creed returned to repeatedly.
Common refinements
Grandiosity. A bombastic god-name motto can feed ego inflation and ring hollow. Aspirational-but-honest beats cosmic.
- Borrowing someone else’s. A copied motto carries no personal jolt; the whole mechanism is your own recognition.
- No emotional charge. If saying it does nothing, it’s the wrong phrase — keep refining until it lands.
- Setting and forgetting. The benefit comes from use — invoking it, signing with it, returning to it. Unused, it’s inert.
- Treating it as permanent dogma. DuQuette’s spirit is evolutionary; outgrow and renew it as you change.
- Expecting the universe to respond. The realistic payoff is in your own conduct and focus; aim there.