Toxic Positivity Has No Place In Magick

Toxic Positivity is, "the belief that no matter how dire or difficult a situation is, people should maintain a positive mindset. While there are benefits to being optimistic and engaging in positive thinking, toxic positivity rejects all difficult emotions in favor of a cheerful and often falsely-positive façade."[1]

This is extremely common in Law of Attraction communities. Briefly, the Law of Attraction is, "a philosophy suggesting that positive thoughts bring positive results into a person's life, while negative thoughts bring negative outcomes. It is based on the belief that thoughts are a form of energy and that positive energy attracts success in all areas of life, including health, finances, and relationships."[2]

But this is patently false. Everyone has experienced situations that disprove this. For example, who hasn't went on a date with someone they liked, and felt the whole time that the date was going excellent and they were really into you, just for them to tell you later they want nothing to do with you? 

On the flip side, who hasn't been super scared of something and constantly worried and stressed over that thing, only for it to turn out to be nothing? E.g. getting tested for stds and worrying you have one only to get your results back and be negative for any and all stds.

If the Law of attraction were true, the person worrying about having an std would have one, the person thinking their date was great would have manifested the date being great. 

The reason that this isn't so, is that the Law of Attraction is false! There is a real objective world outside of you that you are not in control of. There are other human beings with free will and you cannot control them. However, there is a grain of truth to the law. Your thoughts do influence reality! You cannot force someone to love you but you can influence them to see you in a better light.

Law of Attraction and other New Age ideas are watered down versions of magick, and they end up strongly influencing modern magick, diluting and tainting it. This has caused many magicians to adopt toxic positivity. This is very harmful because, "it can harm people who are going through difficult times. Rather than being able to share genuine human emotions and gain unconditional support, people who are faced with toxic positivity find their feelings dismissed, ignored, or outright invalidated."[3]

It is okay to get frustrated, depressed and discouraged. These are normal human emotions. Sometimes magick does fail. Just like how your car doesn't start every time you turn the key. You need to accept failure and negative emotions, not avoid them! That's how you gain true spiritual growth! There is no spiritual growth in denying reality and pretending everything is peachy when the world is on fire.