Any magicians starting their path after their forties ...

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

Do you notice anything odd, such as more and more dire financial and health concerns? People turning their backs to you? Increased agitation?

Is it just age, or is it that you didnt have your shit together before venturing onto the path, that the path isnt the right one for you, or deities being assholes? Tests?

Just wondering, no reason.

 

[Xenophon]

I started late. I have been better off psychologically. (But then I was neither exactly balanced nor miserable before. Yes, that is correct: happily unstable, to a degree.) Financially? Less so than before, but that is due to COVID playing havoc with my work. People? I couldn't care less about them and they, oddly, seem to mostly lap it up. I think I'm a prick; online quizzes say I'm on some spectrum or other.

 

[Mannimarco]

Do you notice anything odd, such as more and more dire financial and health concerns? People turning their backs to you? Increased agitation?

Is it just age, or is it that you didnt have your shit together before venturing onto the path, that the path isnt the right one for you, or deities being assholes? Tests?

Just wondering, no reason.

The problem with this question is anyone starting in thier forties will have nothing to compare thier experience too, how would they know how things would have gone if they started at 15?
That said, some things can be guessed at. I started at 30, and I'm in my forties now. There is way more social programming to break down/unlearn. One doesn't have the energy to do hours and hours of rituals everyday. One has decades of disappointments and resentments to work through. Patterns in life grow stronger over time, and can be pretty damn potent after three or four decades.
Entities do treat people differently based on their age, expecting more from you if you're older. It may be that the closer they are to human society, and the more contact they've had with humans, the stronger this effect is. I've heard it said that the God's are more familiar with human society than other entities, and thus better positioned to solve problems arising from it. (Beings like the fae or dragons are obviously further from humans socially than the Greek or norse pantheons.) The other side of that coin is said deities being more demanding or judgemental if someone is not "winning" at life by 40. Freya, for example.

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

I understand the replies points. One thing I knew was that most Orthodox or Hasidics didnt start Qabalah work until their forties, with the empty nest thing under control, finances taken care of. Dabbling since my twenties here and there, it is just now where Ive drawn a line in the sand on finishing what Ive started, and notice more resistance now than when I was in my twenties or thirties. Just wondered if it is all in my head, or my age, or the path itself.

 

[neilwilkes]

Do you notice anything odd, such as more and more dire financial and health concerns? People turning their backs to you? Increased agitation?

Is it just age, or is it that you didnt have your shit together before venturing onto the path, that the path isnt the right one for you, or deities being assholes? Tests?

Just wondering, no reason.

Oh, how the arrogance of youth on full display here (and it is true that youth is wasted on the young)
Did it ever occur that some of us may have been involved earlier, but chose (for various reasons) to walk away until much later in life?
Why assume that we just didn't 'have our shit together', or the cause of returning being a crisis of some sort.

 

[pixel_fortune]

Oh, how the arrogance of youth on full display here

Diluculo's in his 50s. He asked the question because he started on his path "late"

 

[neilwilkes]

Diluculo's in his 50s. He asked the question because he started on his path "late"

I stand well corrected & apologise unreservedly then - he came over as a stripling!
(I am an old git myself)

 

[Xenophon]

I'm not sure the older folks have to "break down" a lot of social conditioning, as is suggested above. At least some of us were long at loggerheads with the established disorder of things. We were simply too obtuse to take magic seriously. There are enough other ideological snake-oil salesmen out there to waste a lifetime on. Fortunately I stumbled onto a volume originally published by the short-lived UR group and took a sharp left.

Sure, one might rue not starting sooner, did that not waste even more time.

 

[Vandheer]

I'm not sure the older folks have to "break down" a lot of social conditioning, as is suggested above. At least some of us were long at loggerheads with the established disorder of things

Who is to say you were not an odd dandelion that clunk onto life through an asphalt?

 

[Xenophon]

Who is to say you were not an odd dandelion that clunk onto life through an asphalt?

Rarely am I styled a dandelion. More often I am addressed with those other terms you hint at: "ass" and "fault."

In magic so as in the flick Dr. Zhivago. The doctor's Bolshie brother joins the army on Party orders at the outset of WWI. Why? "Because the Party knew: contented men do not volunteer for a war." I'm guessing neither do happy campers take up magick after their first gray hairs have sprouted.

 

[Vandheer]

More often I am addressed with those other terms you hint at: "ass"

I would never insult donkeys like that.

Alright no more derailments from me, can't add anything here of value, not in my forties yet.

 

[Lemongrass00]

There is way more social programming to break down/unlearn.

I'd make an argument that starting in youth can be just as challenging. It is especially hard to keep in check flares of 'youthful' narcissism, arrogance, overconfidence, impatience, etc when doing work like this. I can see a pretty big difference looking back when I was a teenager, I can't imagine how much I'll be cringing when I am in my 40s.

 

[Xenophon]

I would never insult donkeys like that.

Alright no more derailments from me, can't add anything here of value, not in my forties yet.

I'd make an argument that starting in youth can be just as challenging. It is especially hard to keep in check flares of 'youthful' narcissism, arrogance, overconfidence, impatience, etc when doing work like this. I can see a pretty big difference looking back when I was a teenager, I can't imagine how much I'll be cringing when I am in my 40s.

Probably less cringing than you think. Advancing years disclose to one the sagacity of being a sociopath. Them with a classical education like to speak here of "pathei mathos," the wisdom of having suffered.

Seriously (and on topic) the older might be less inclined to fritter magickal workings away on relatively minor matters like what gets called "love," or personal spite. (I had one 18-something year old underling some years back who routinely threatened all staff with collecting nail clippings, hair, whatever. This was just before 9/11, so hexes were not yet federal offenses.)

 

[neilwilkes]

In magic so as in the flick Dr. Zhivago. The doctor's Bolshie brother joins the army on Party orders at the outset of WWI. Why? "Because the Party knew: contented men do not volunteer for a war." I'm guessing neither do happy campers take up magick after their first gray hairs have sprouted.

Oh, I don't know.
My interest began at Grammar School when I was but 13 years old, when the only problems in my life were at that point in time still obscured from me as it was not until much later I found out what a complete & total 'See You Next Tuesday' my father was - and continued until I had to make a choice in my mid 20's between devoting the rest of my life to the path or walking away whilst I still could. I chose the latter.
The next time it returned (apart from at various intervals throughout the next 20 years) I was at age 45 and I am now 60 and still very contented in general, and although drawn more & more to the old pathway I will not return there & am now trying to decide my own path.

Been trying to do a multi-quote here although failed, so just wanted to say that is there really any other way than learning through suffering?
Pain is after all a great teacher & for concentrating the mind there is really nothing to beat it as long as it's use is carefully controlled - random pain for the sake of it is as black as it gets

 

[Xenophon]

Oh, I don't know.
My interest began at Grammar School when I was but 13 years old, when the only problems in my life were at that point in time still obscured from me as it was not until much later I found out what a complete & total 'See You Next Tuesday' my father was - and continued until I had to make a choice in my mid 20's between devoting the rest of my life to the path or walking away whilst I still could. I chose the latter.
The next time it returned (apart from at various intervals throughout the next 20 years) I was at age 45 and I am now 60 and still very contented in general, and although drawn more & more to the old pathway I will not return there & am now trying to decide my own path.

Been trying to do a multi-quote here although failed, so just wanted to say that is there really any other way than learning through suffering?
Pain is after all a great teacher & for concentrating the mind there is really nothing to beat it as long as it's use is carefully controlled - random pain for the sake of it is as black as it gets

Good point on learning. But a certain amount of what gets styled "education" is a labyrinth of rationalizations for avoiding salutary suffering. (In my youth, I am deeply ashamed to say, I taught John Rawls 'A Theory of Justice' and actually thought I believed it.)

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I was interested in the paranormal from an early age, but it was only after I'd been researching for over ten years that I realised I was a magician.

 

[Mannimarco]

I'd make an argument that starting in youth can be just as challenging. It is especially hard to keep in check flares of 'youthful' narcissism, arrogance, overconfidence, impatience, etc when doing work like this. I can see a pretty big difference looking back when I was a teenager, I can't imagine how much I'll be cringing when I am in my 40s.

I didn't say starting in youth was not just as challenging, I said that starting later in life meant one had way more social programming to break down. That's what the thread was about, how things worked for people starting magick later in life. Obviously, starting at totally different stages of life is going to be different, what's your point?

 

[Lemongrass00]

I didn't say starting in youth was not just as challenging, I said that starting later in life meant one had way more social programming to break down. That's what the thread was about, how things worked for people starting magick later in life. Obviously, starting at totally different stages of life is going to be different, what's your point?

No need to get upset, just pointing out a different perspective

 

[astralmagickcraft]

A hard period starts off every foray into an occult life. It's just how it goes. The astral winds are loud and when you first listen to them, you're opening your very soul to a larger world and will see and hear and feel things you never had before.

 

[Promise]

I'm in my mid 50's, and diving in ... Like it seems, many of us that are starting later in life have. So, technically I started at 15. So, it would be interesting to know how many first time checking out occult after 40, vs a deepening of something started decades before.

I did a bunch of other kinda related stuff - reiki, nlp, huna, scientology, landmark, chi Gung, science of mind, Idenics, sedona, 12 steps, Avatar, hypnosis, among others, and still do ... so it's not like totally abanding that stuff either.

I have a lot a lot to learn, though. I think magick for me will be one of a set of tools for dealing with life.

Not sure if I told you what you wanted, feel free to follow up for additional clarification or whatever..