Many people are under the impression spells and rituals work as in the movies and expect them to really work that way: you recite some words and wave your wand around and poof! Whatever you asked for becomes reality in an instant. Or within a very short time. Unfortunately, this belief is being spread by some individuals who are involved in the occult in some form or another.
Now, I'm not saying things can't happen that way. They sure can although a lot of times it's not that easy because many reasons. I wrote the article on magical resistance because of that, as well as to direct people to it whenever someone comes seeking my services and expects an overnight miracles, and I also talk about it in Magic Words. But in this article I want to talk about another factor that can prevent the success of magical operations - cheating.
By cheating I mean someone is doing mundane actions against mundane rules that apply in certain areas of life which someone else addresses with magical means to cause change. You'd probably say casting spells is cheating, but in many cases people make use of this method because it's very hard for them to achieve a certain thing with mundane means alone. If it were that easy then it's likely they wouldn't use spells in the first place, especially in a world where, besides many frauds and scams, there are well oiled bureaucratic machines that in many cases work against the average citizen, at least in the background.
