Everything Under the Moon

So I am a long time pagan and in that time I have gone through many flavours of occult practices... I have practiced the qabal, I have been a Goetic invoked, I have been a chaos magician just to name a few... so how do you lot feel about some of those? Like what are the preconceptions people have about chaos magicians or goetic practitioners for example. View? Insights? Rants and ramblings?

My view is they are head-oriented, and complex, based on study and memorization. The study can be so focussed on power that it sometimes skips over the wisdom that makes the power possible.

Edit- upon reflection, that latter point is true of any magical system. It just appears that kabbala seems to attract the head-focussed folk, educated type more than the dirt and grit, touchy-feely type. We need a bit of both. Use our heads and our hearts & get our hands dirty.

SpiritTalker wrote:My view is they are head-oriented, and complex, based on study and memorization. The study can be so focussed on power that it sometimes skips over the wisdom that makes the power possible.

Edit- upon reflection, that latter point is true of any magical system. It just appears that kabbala seems to attract the head-focussed folk, educated type more than the dirt and grit, touchy-feely type. We need a bit of both. Use our heads and our hearts.

i agree, my first exposure to magick was Wicca.. thats how I ended up meeting a bunch of new-age-fluffy-bunny wiccans (that just means the type that thinks "I'm a good person so nothing bad could possibly happen to me")

Fluffy bunnies are cute. My cat wanted to chase one.

Snow

My first exposure to magic was satanism, thru a college dorm room mate, but we won't go there. it shook the fluff off the bunny.

Lmao I hear that ST

My first experience with magic was noticing the energy that flows in and around me through meditation. If I hadn't gotten into martial arts it may have taken me longer but I'm pretty sure I'd have eventually begun walking this path.
I never could quite get into the ritualism of Wicca. Most of my spells are more like small poems rarely more than 4 lines one of the reasons I feel close to Odin and the Norse.

Regarding Chaos Magicians; I've noticed in the past a lot of concern over the chaos magician maxim of Belief being a tool, usually by people who fail to distinguish the difference between belief and faith; belief being an exercise in Will, an intellectual choice and one that can and does change over time (Faith being a spiritual imperative).

Ive seen a lot of labelling of Chaos Magic as "unwise", yet wisdom in my experience is the attribute of the practitioner, not the path they walk - no path or person is above both wisdom and folly.

SpiritTalker wrote:My first exposure to magic was satanism, thru a college dorm room mate, but we won't go there. it shook the fluff off the bunny.

Ugh, not a very nice way of getting introduces to the craft!

My first experience: I was afraid of darkenss (still am ( and in order to be able to go to the basement or sleep by myself, I casted protection spell from the eutm site. I felt the heat and a protective bubble around myself. Repeating those words untill I got away from the dark place, even at my grandparents' house which is really creepy, helped a lot.
This and the fact that when I got electrocuted, I didn't have a problem and my mom was thrown through the glass door, from the same electric shock; made me believe in magic and nothing could prove me wrong.

About Chaos magick, it sounds like the opposite of what I am using tye craft for. Not very friendly and peaceful...al I wrong?

We learn from every experience. I figured out what was being done to me. We went through a lot of the learning process together. We actually got along OK after that.

ST, you changed your profile picture! (Completely unrelated)

CleverlyDisguised wrote:ST, you changed your profile picture! (Completely unrelated)

What? I still see the old one.

SpiritTalker wrote:My first exposure to magic was satanism, thru a college dorm room mate, but we won't go there. it shook the fluff off the bunny.

Oh dear
I remembe once upon a time i was drawn to that path wanting vengance
Thankfully i didnt have the guts to go through with it

SpiritTalker wrote:My first exposure to magic was satanism, thru a college dorm room mate, but we won't go there. it shook the fluff off the bunny.

Same here Satanism. I remember studying it in grade 8 with 4 others in my class, somehow we convinced the teacher to allow satanism to be one of the topics to study haha..

My room mate was highly intelligent, with few scruples. She read a lot & we'd discuss what she read. When she experimented with satanism, she asked me to act as the battery (aka fall-guy). In doing so, I lost so much weight that my clothes hung on me, and I often felt drained. Small wonder. By reading one of her Anton LeVey books and educating myself, I figured out that I was being put in a "sucker" position. if anything went wrong, I'd take the brunt, not her. So I objected to being used, and refused to take part. She switched to studying Cabala and ceremonial magic, and was a driving force in our college paranormal study group. She introduced the group to mediumship. so I had a broad, extremely general intro into assorted magical processes before witchcraft.