Just a bit on how I learned magick & my views on learning it
When I set my heart on learning magick,
I had no idea what I was getting into. I had turned away from a religion that meant the world to me because I was denied something I felt was immeasurably important, that I hadn’t done anything so wrong it should be reasonably withheld.
I was eleven or ten or six or…kneeling at the bedside praying, reading books on dogma I didn’t understand, writing poems convincing myself that lying wasn’t the same as breathing, begging a god who was always looking the other way for calm.
When I began learning magick,
it wasn’t through a lens of “magick,” or even “magic.” It was books that put manipulation at their center. Understanding, or trying to, the principles behind manipulative tactics in interpersonal interactions. I read a bit on hypnosis too, but it never grabbed me. It was learning to control the self, and how that extended to others that most moved me. Related I’m sure, was how deeply I valued being able to convincingly lie for a while.
I wanted to learn astral projection. I wanted to learn how to fly, and how to move energy in intense (fiction-focused) ways. I wanted to be a “witch” more than I wanted to hold onto a religion that had scorned me for existing, that had kept me bound in the throws of fear for so long.
It wasn’t through books or spirits. It was in stillness. It was the quiet between the loudness of breath, speech, and movement. It was counting the heartbeats that sped and slowed in fear and calm. It was the fear of shadows loitering overhead and the plunge into the dark.
The first four years of my practice, because by then I was actively and intentionally practicing magick, were sans spirits and sans occult guidebooks. I read a little on spirituality, and definitely on philosophy, quite a bit on myths as well. But that’s because I was (and am) interested in those things, not because I was seeking a certain path or didn’t know where to go.
Of course, it can’t really be said that I did know where I was going, and I’m not sure I can say for sure now that I know where this path winds through but I wasn’t lost. I was limited in materials then too, trying to make my way through manifesting and energy work, trying to understand what would become, and was even then and even before, the foundations of my craft. Which is not only the foundation of my craft, but also so much of who I am, these things are impossibly intertwined (as they should be).
If at eleven I decided to list my grievances of the bible, at fourteen I wondered about atheism, and at sixteen began reading on spirits. There was overlap, between the demon-summoning and begging, desperate, prayers and worship to the god I had revered for years prior. In this time, most of my focus was on energy work and meditation.
The first magick I actively participated in was important to me, it was empowering and in many ways intense. But it was nothing like calling a spirit into my space, like being a conduit for it, or hearing the energy roar and quiet into a calm overwhelming.
The first spirit I set out to call intentionally and did call into a ritual was Dantalion. And among the careful moments of that ritual I’d planned and cautiously executed, I was thrown into another world. One where spirits exist not in a void or vacuum, but as welcomed through us into our world just as we exist through them as part of theirs.
For years, I relied on Dantalion’s teachings primarily to guide me through this craft and practice. So much at the beginning, as had been the case before reaching out to him, was feeling adrift as though there was so much in the mundane and magic worlds both that I had no answers for. I was forbidden from reading certain (many) texts in these years as well. Something that has gotten mixed results when I’ve told others (mostly, though, disbelief, doubt, and scorn).
But why bother to practice in a way that is not ours, mine? How can someone else’s beliefs or removed judgements on my path be more important to me than mine?
Several years into my practice, then, I began discussing with others on similar walks about their paths, about our shared experiences, the types of magick we enjoyed–or even begrudgingly partook of–that resonated. And not even then did I begin to pick my way though occult books, not long revered authors’ words and not contemporary views or guides.
It has long been, for me, reliance on myself, on spirits I’ve welcomed in, and those people around me who have offered stories passed that has brought my magick to life. It was much more recently that I began to contemplate the works of others who have walked this and similar paths before me.
I believe people should not frequent tables to which they have brought nothing.
For that reason, I believe it is crucial for people to form their own views, opinions, and more often than not collect their own experiences before sitting down to learn of others. I, of course, as someone who loves literature, reading, and understanding others’ perspectives, advocate dearly for consuming knowledge and learning from others. However, how can we ever hope to be in conversation with a text–or its author–if we do not have anything with which to converse?
Blind consumption of others’ stories, and acceptance of them ought be reserved for people we trust blindly.
People like to ask how to get started with magick, which books people have read, which resources they have seen, which rituals are the most powerful, which spirits the quickest, what is “the best”? These questions are entirely contrary to what and how I have learned, which is to learn first through the self.
To understand what compels you in the mundane world, what brings you closer to the magical. These are the things which should be exalted as a path into the magical is lit. Even in teachings that seek to standardize avenues of learning and texts consumed, anyone successful understands that people are not all the same and thus cannot all grow when treated as if the external is the only thing which matters, is a catalyst for growth, or otherwise should inform how learning is conducted.
Understanding of the self, however fleeting it may be, is a greater key to your magick and a likely path, than any number of spirits or books can provide. There are many ways to know yourself, at least to dip your feet into the pool of knowledge (of self and others), my suggestion to anyone who wants to learn magick would always be to start with the self.
What has brought you to this path, and when shed, what remains of yourself to follow deeper into it?
