Fear 

As an aspect of Magical Workings

Fear is a primal emotion. It's a life-or-death, self-preservation emotion. It's very difficult to get an instant grip on fear when it is triggered suddenly. The good news is that you do have power over fear when it relates to such things as magical working.

The difference is that the fears that arise during a working are not the life-or-death variety. (usually.) You actually have the time to access the emotions that your working raises, and to deal with them in the most effective way possible. If fear is raised as you work, you must pause and work on that level first. If you are working on the magical level and you perceive fear, chances are likely that you're not about to be suddenly attacked from the dark corners of the room. This is not fear of personal harm. What we are actually describing are "insecurities". Some examples might be "fear of what you want not happening," and "fear of the opposite happening". These aren't really examples of fear, but of insecurities that can cripple a magical work.

So the real issue is: how can you handle these insecurities that rear their ugly head just when you need to be as focused as possible? Well, as I hinted above, the answer lies in pausing.

A scenario: You are desperate for a job and having no luck, so you decide to do a magical work to help yourself. As you light your candles and lay out your tools (or whatever you do in your Craft), these big ugly thoughts of insecurity and self-doubt begin plaguing you. "What if I'm just fooling myself that all this hoopla will actually work? Am I wasting my time? How is this going to actually do any good anyway? What if I do get a job? Will I hate it? Am I making things worse? Wouldn't it be better if I just did nothing and see what happens? Don't I believe in the Divine? Won't they step in with the best possible solution? Should I meddle? What am I doing all this for?"

HINT: This sermon of self-doubt should sound familiar to just about everyone.

So the good news is that you're not alone... it's just that we're all a bunch of pagan braggarts, and we don't talk about this much. Furthermore, we've all developed personal ways of getting past this and getting down to the actual work... and feeling better about it in the process.

So pause. Listen to yourself when you begin the internal litany of fear. Immediately postpone any work you were originally planning on and listen to yourself. Let your mind wander down the worst-case scenarios. Offer best-case scenarios as a counter measure. Play out your insecurities as far as they can go, while offering yourself positive results that are possible. For each time your mind says "we can't, because..." say "we might, because..." If your insecurities are very deep, you will have to dig even deeper to find counters to each fear. But you can find those reasons, because if you didn't have an innate sense that you could change things, you would have never found yourself in the middle of a ritual to change things.

So stop your ritual mid-stroke... pause... and listen to your fears. Track down each and every little niggle of doubt. And then proceed. Your magic will be that much stronger for it, because you will then have clarified things to an extent that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.