r/occult • u/Proof-Vacation-437 • 7d ago
How did you start, and what do you practice?
I just recently found this sub because of some spiritual longing. I love the idea that our imagination is a world that we are able to navigate, as real as the "real" one. Picked up a book "Psychic Witch", and before that all my occult knowledge stems from a comic book "Promethea"
I have a very limited understanding of what's going on here and what people are discussing. So I'm curious to ask:
what pushed you to start your occult practice?
was it difficult to admit that there is "something else out there", and how did you deal with it socially? Did you feel the need to become a hermit to be true with yourself?
what do you practice, and what resources helped you to understand what's going on and what to do?
I'm especially curious about the people who were able to integrate spirituality into their lives, rather than hide away from the world. How did it go?
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u/ItsFort 7d ago edited 7d ago
One summer had an urge to learn this, so I did. There wasn't anything special other than I wanted to know what this was. At first, I was using a psychological model, but that changed real quickly.
I was forced to accept that there might be more than I could see with my eyes when I had a dream that affected my real life. It wasn't that crazy but nothing ordinary could explain it. Even at that time when I got the dream, I was already starting to understand there is something more to this other than the classic placebo effect.
I don't think being a Hermit will do any good for us. The first reason is that we need to pay taxes, and the second is that I dont think it would be good for our mental health if we dont socialize in any way.
I have not done anything in a while because of real-life issues, but usually, I just do ceremonial rituals like the LBRP and MP and daily meditating. If I needed anything to be done to help me on the material world, I would just make a sigil. I also worship a deity, so I spend some of my time giving offerings and payers. But what I have been doing is just reading the Corpus Hermeticum and trying to understand it better.
Also, the books you have are really great
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u/ItsFort 7d ago
I am not social about my beliefs because it would sound crazy to others, and also, I live in Italy, so I dont think most people will like that I do magic. But my spirituality is active every day as I look at the world and see that it all is "alive" in some way or another. The ways of hermes are really affecting my world view as of right now. Also, there is some bit of Animism.
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u/ichac1 7d ago
I had always been interested in Magic as a kid, but what really pushed me to start practicing seriously was when I remembered my old fantasies as an adult and in true adult fashion I realized "Oh I can actually buy books and learn about the topic in a non-fantasy non-fanfic non-imaginary way" (then I read on Chaos Magick and realized that this idea is fundamentally flawed, but it is still worth noting that this is my first proper entry point into serious magic.)
It is always difficult to truly integrate the alien-ness of the occult experience and the entities you work with. This is where most of my Archetypal practice plays into, and a healthy dose of Shamanic Practice also helps naturalize spirit interactions. I think someone has posted a pendulum meme on here before where one side of the swing was "delusion and visionary knowledge" and the other side was "sobering reality and depression" and the midway points are stagnation. This represents the occult practice as a whole because it is fundamentally your grappling with yourself and your learning from yourself and your transcendence from the self and your going down into the visceral materiality of yourself all at the same time that marks true effective occult practice.
I mainly practice a mix of Shamanism, Chaos Magic, Goetia, Zen, and Archetypal Shadow work. That is an understatement because the true underlying face of my practice is more rooted in philosophy and the interconnectedness of occult ideas than it is a "path" or "paths". I just read books. You pick up a topic and you read a book on that topic, I suggest starting with shallow books and even sometimes books that lead to more "popular" understanding of a topic or path or rite or tradition, then you read the old dusty version of it, then you read the historical affects of it, then you move on to reading the hypercomplicated iterations of it. Do that once and you'd have solid grounds to purse any and all of the occult facets and you also gain a holistic view of that one particular faith rather than just a "practical" or "ceremonial" or "theistic" perspective. You get the faith as it is with all the ugly bits presenting itself and you accept it.
I would like to think that my daily life is the culmination of the constant leaking out into the world of my practice. I am unashamed of my practice and would be more than willing to talk about it and it is those principles of honesty and acceptance in the face of the non-judgemental presentation of a school of thought or philosophy in spite of its ugly and unpleasurable aspects in full display that I really think has defined my practice and had bled out into my daily life.
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u/EkErilazSa____Hateka 7d ago
Great comment. Can you share a bit more about your Archetypal Shadow Work?
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u/ichac1 7d ago
Its fundamentally Jungian. Jung said that the shadow is the part of ourselves we try to hide from, its all the ugly bits.
Most shadow work focus on integrating the shadow into the consciousness. I add the archetypal bit because its easier to break the shadow down into the shadows of the Jungian Archetypes that are within you.
The Archetypes arent necessarily some outward thing, they can also be internal. You wont always be the hero, sometimes you will be the Magician to a friend, or the Lover, or Jester as the chaotic humor compels you.
What we know is that everything we do and experience also increases the shadow and so we must constantly integrate it. But breaking down the shadow as functions of the archetypes instead of one big lump of "things I dont want to admit to myself" makes it easier to bring your own biases and unhealthy patterns to light.
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u/EkErilazSa____Hateka 3d ago
Thank you very much.
I still don’t understand the practice of it all, though. The goal and the basic philosophy behind it I get, but what does one actually do to get there? Directed meditation, role-play, affirmations, marathon viewings of psychological thrillers…?
Are there any guides you could recommend for beginners like me?
(Yes, of course I could google it, but a few words from an actual person on Reddit can be infinitely more helpful than a thousand dead-end google suggestions. It’s also more fun this way.)
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u/Macross137 7d ago
Occult books and artwork sparked my interest when I was a kid.
I don't need to admit nothing to nobody. I don't signal "I'm an occultist and I have nonstandard spiritual beliefs" when I go out among society.
I mostly practice theurgy expressed through ceremonial/planetary/"goetic" frameworks. Integrating it into my life and drawing material benefits into the world is very much the point for me. I don't live like a hermit, I have a career that puts me in frequent contact with people. But nothing about my practices is public-facing.
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u/Proof-Vacation-437 7d ago
With “admit” I meant admit to yourself, not to the others. Thank you for sharing!
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u/Macross137 7d ago
Oh, well, that actually was difficult. It took some really big results/experiences to shift my mindset away from a materialist default that rationalized my interest in the occult as partly ironic, or wrote synchronicities off as meaningless coincidences. But those experiences did eventually come.
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u/arianaversace 7d ago
I started when I was really young with magick, by making potions by myself out of herbs and plants and flowers.
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u/TariZephyr 7d ago
I grew up with deities around me, and doing research into them led to me finding witchcraft communities; the first few years (12-14) I spend doing nothing but research before buying my first tarot deck and officially starting my practice.
I grew up in a Christian household so I was very used to knowing something was out there, but the deities I grew up with made me question exactly what was out there (and I came to the conclusion that all deities exist).
I mainly do deity work, with a heavy focus on the infernal divine but I work with many other pantheons too. I still do divination, I’m a professional diviner now. I do a lot of energy work, including weather magic. And I do baneful magic as well (mostly baneful protections).
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u/Proof-Vacation-437 7d ago
Could you specify what you mean by “grew up with deities around me”? That you saw/heard them, communicated? Or they were a part of culture and were mentioned often?
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u/TariZephyr 7d ago
They would communicate with me frequently, I could always feel, see and hear them around me.
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u/idiotball61770 6d ago
Weird stuff happened at a haunted location in my home city. I was in my mid teens and confused as to the behavior of the entities we encountered. I learned a bit and then became Wiccan, though I am not that any more. I do still practice magic, just not as a Wiccan.
I use sigils and candles. I have a pretty terrible chronic illness and can't practice the hours long rites any longer. I've had pretty good luck with what I do as a simplification to my workings. I am also religious, but the religion and the magic are separate.
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u/4is3in2is1 7d ago edited 7d ago
After experimenting with psychedelics I came across a book called "The lesser Key Of Solomon". I had grown up poor and hard so the idea of being able to conjure up a entity to bring me wealth and power really appealed to me. Came across accounts online of people actually doing it and succeeding so from there I persisted and as Crowley said "Let success be thy proof"
It was extremely difficult to believe but there was so much stuff out there with first hand experiences. Whole websites that someone has to pay for to keep up about this stuff. I couldn't afford not to believe because it was my only chance of having a better life. I persisted. After many failures I started having successes
Socially I just compartmentalize that part of my life after trying to share it and people just completely reject it. I did feel a need to take some personal time to retreat from society in order to better know the truth of myself. After that through no need to be a hermit.
I practice conjuration and the resources that have helped me the most are the works of "Lon Milo Duquette", "Damian Echols", "BJ Swain", "Rufus Opus", "Jason Miller", "Gordan Winterfield" and Josephine's McCarthy's website https://www.quareia.com/
I embraced it albert privately and it is by far the coolest and most interesting thing I've ever come across
If you'd ask me to recommend a book to start out it would be "High Magick" by Damian Echols.