There are a number of times in the year when it’s quite possible to ‘checkers’ yourself forward a few notches in your career.

In the Northern Hemisphere, coming back out of summer is just one of those times. Budgets have been reset, everyone settles in for the race to the end of the year (realistically late November), new strategies get rolled out.

It’s a probabilistic weak point. And thus very susceptible to magic.

Your employers are going to be looking for ‘the right kind of people’ for new projects, possibly even whole new teams.

It’s a good time for a little image magic. It’s a good time to put on the ‘right kind of face’ at work.

It’s a good time for a two-faced God.

Janus is your guy

Granted, Janus‘s two faces speak to his role as a gatekeeper or opener of thresholds, but he also has very strong aspects of subterfuge. In fact, this quality was attributed to him right up until Elizabethan times.

In my favourite Shakespeare play, Othello, Iago makes little to no mention of God or religion because he sociopathologically holds these ideas in utter contempt. The one God he swears by? Janus. Because he’s lying to everyone.

You won’t be lying to everyone, but you will be utilising Janus’s dual role:

• You want new doorways/pathways open to you
• You want to put your most appealing/commercial face toward your employer

So it’s a combination luck/glamour enchantment.

A two-faced spell

Two faces, two steps.

Step 1.

Call in Janus and ask for him blessing. Roman Gods aren’t so picky with their offerings as others. Wine, money… Something Italian maybe? I went with wine but -in all honesty- the words ‘I went with wine’ are also likely to be engraved on my tombstone.

I’m going through an extremely minimal phase at the moment, so my enchantment consisted of

• Space clearing
• Invoking Janus
• Offerings
• Shoaling some career sigils in front of/with him
• Closing

Step 2.

You do the magic to tip the probability of your preferred outcomes more in your favour.

But after that, you go out there and make sure you are exposed to all those positive black swans we like to call successful magical results.

That’s right. This work magic includes actual work.

Janus’s 5 magical strategies

1. Don’t let anyone know how hard you work

Wondering where I have been this week? Working. Working mostly in secret. And secretly studying work-related things. (But it looks like everyone got along fine without me.)

You won’t be considered for the good, complicated stuff if you don’t appear to be sailing through your current responsibilities.

Make your awesomeness look effortless.

2. Be an expert in something

For me this is using social media in a commercial environment. But find a niche, become an expert at it and before you know it you will have the most senior people coming to you for advice.

This will net you friends in high places and minimise the risk of being laid off.

3. Be pretty

It’s sympathetic magic 101. Look the part. Have clean teeth. Don’t smell of cigarettes. Dressing well is the most noticeable thing about you. The majority of the office -and certainly the most senior people- are never going to know that your hair looks like shit because your kid is sick or the air conditioning broke.

Here’s a scary tip from the evil world of advertising: Shoes, watches and teeth are the most telling socioeconomic indicators. So, male or female, make sure you are wearing the best shoes you can afford. (And skip wearing a watch if you can’t afford one.)

4. Don’t bitch

Ever heard a CEO bitch? It’s utterly infantile. It’s all risk and no reward. No matter what you are bitching about; the IT department, the quality of the coffee, your co-workers, only one thing can come out of it. You will rub someone the wrong way. Only. One. Thing.

If you have a bad day or something goes terribly wrong at work then you just come home and bitch to Auntie Gordon. Or the internets in general.

Here is where most of us tend to need the occult help because it’s so easy to fall into bad patterns. But two-faced Janus is definitely a flatterer and a master of words. Use that to your advantage.

5. Lurk

Another one that requires magic to get right.

Do you know where senior management has lunch? Or where they drink after work? Or where the boss buys his or her coffee in the morning?

Obviously this one is high risk but also extremely high reward. You can’t appear to be stalking but you can -for instance- happen to run into your boss and his wife at a local restaurant on the weekend. Don’t sit at their table, just be seen, nod… Briefly introduce if necessary. Or you can get coffee ‘accidentally’ at the same time as your boss once or twice a week.

You don’t want to be their friend. You just want them to start thinking of you in the same way they think of themselves. People move in circles. And your boss’s circle doesn’t eat at Burger King. (Unless you work for Burger King head office. Which would probably be awesome.)

The fifth strategy is very advanced stuff. This is guaranteed to set the black swans flying eventually.

But they all will in the end. It’s just a matter of timing and maximising those happy coincidences that have a tendency to involve us more than most other people.

Bon courage, mes sorciers.