Thanks for the warm welcome and for sharing your thoughts with me.
Welcome, if I might ask what is stopping you from starting?
Nearly always experience will bring greater insight and understanding of the essence of Magickal practices than studying on it. Gnosis is supreme above all else.
About this, I believe that there is no easy or short way to explain my lack of practice, but I will try to summarize it in a few topics. Sorry for the long text ahead, and maybe these words can sound like an outburst.
Lack of Faith
Following closely some religions and cults since I was a child, from my experience in these environments, I never felt connected or thought it made sense to obey, pray, or blindly believe that there is someone superior who governs "the whole thing", and even less this thing might humanly resemble us.
Praying, obeying, and believing no longer made sense to me at the age of 8, when I began to question the duality of things. My thought as a child was: "good and evil, god and the devil, maybe all of this simply doesn't exist, or they could even be the same thing, as humans are. When in doubt, I'll stop praying because I don't know what or who I'm praying for and what I gain from it. I have a Nintendo and it makes me a lot happier than that zombie on the cross."
Some time later studying a bit of hermeticism, goetia, Luciferianism, kabbalah, and especially chaos magic (where I focus most), I began to understand that the most logical line of reasoning for me is to see the universe as energy and credit all magickal, esoteric and religious experiences as successful manipulations of these energies.
In a short thought: "Energy is there following its own flow, chaotic and not programmed (except in nature, where the natural order seems to be solid). Whoever manages to manipulate its different densities, will achieve their miracles, and will be able to materialize their intentions and desires in life. Manipulation is possible, because we are also made of this energy, and we can feel it clearly in our emotions and thoughts."
Assuming that there is no one "big owner of everything", and that at the same time anyone can be an "owner of some little piece", there is a great effort and difficulty on my part to follow any esoteric or religious doctrine that is based on a central order of things, even if it is just an abstraction to an easier approach for some ppl to understand. From angels, daemons, gods and goddesses, spirits, to elements, planets, constellations and even elements of the periodic table. The effort of cataloging something that is by nature without form or pattern, is very strange, and it drives me away.
Fear
Having this lack of faith in things, it's natural for me to try to do things on my own through experimentation, trial and error, taking as a starting point the readings and studies that others have already done through their own experiments. However, in trying and failing there are several levels of errors, and as much as most mistakes generate learning, some of these mistakes can take more than just frustration or disappointment.
In a position where I cannot visualize the existence of someone who may be looking out for my safety and well-being, I depend solely on my successes and failures to create these defenses and protections for my sanity, health and for the few things I have in my life. I feel all these things are at risk all the time. The feeling of being alone and helpless in the world is devastating, and it causes a lot of fear.
So fear generates a paradox: in order not to be afraid I need to understand, to understand I need to have contact, to have contact I need to experience, in experimentation I can lose, if I lose I get more afraid and I don't want to dedicate effort to trying to understand.
The mental and emotional exhaustion accumulated over the years also dictates the pace at which things will go on. I don't believe there is experimentation without dedication, but I can't dedicate myself to losing more. For those who have little, to lose what they have is to lose everything. That's why I usually read, try to learn and be open to all kinds of ideas, but to make it happen in the real world, I often weigh whether I'm willing to risk losing everything in exchange for having my will met. Sometimes I am, but most of the time I'm not.
Conclusion
When I was younger, I dreamed of having a person or being who could guide me along these paths, but all I found were people who only reaffirm what they want to believe, what is beneficial to them, and in my opinion these people are not wrong in doing so, is the logical sense. But all of this is more about them than about us, and I learned to accept that very early on, looking for my own truths, pondering how much I am willing to lose to achieve them. "Nothing is free", as they say.
I still perform my experiments when it suits me (what usually happens in situations of extreme urgency), and I keep extensive notes on all causes and effects in my magical diary for posthumous reference. But I am certainly not endowed with any apparatus to explain things or guide people in specialized debates on doctrines, books, orders, etc. I use a lot of emotional energy when I do my experiments, and that's what I consider myself to be, an emotional experimenter without beliefs(?).
I would like to know what you guys think of all that I have shared.
- Am I being too arrogant to not want to submit to having faith in some deity or doctrine without expecting results?
- Is there really that much to lose by trying to manipulate the occult without having a miracle angel watching over me?
- Has anyone gone through these questions and ended up somewhere other than absolute solitude in fear? #dramatic
Thanks for the space again.
