How did you decide which occult system to follow?

[electra heart]

I'm always curious about other people's paths in the occult. I'm a bit of a basic bitch, so I've never truly dived into anything fully. There's so many interesting ideas out there and I find it hard to stick to one. I'd like to try this year to really focus on something, but I don't even know where to start at this point.

What occult system do you follow now, or have you followed in the past? What has made you change your mind on certain systems after learning more about them? What books have helped you on that journey? I'd love to know!

 

[PinealisGlandia]

I'm inclined to think there is only one "occult system". It's simply so big that if two people approach it from opposite sides, they might never see the common middle shared between them.

The big thing that's stuck out to me from brushing up against every discipline is the overlap. Like with numerology, you can find a dozen systems that all agree on the importance of numbers, but the correspondences don't overlap (e.g a "3" isn't assigned the same meaning by everyone). What I take from that is: We have to find our own correspondences. Same with astrology, you can read a million how-to-read-a-chart blogs, but eventually you'll have to depend on your own interpretation, because every one of those blogs is someone's interpretation. No one has the perfect immutable core that your practice ought to be built on, and I'm highly skeptical of anyone who claims to have such a thing.

The best thing IMO you can do to develop your practice is to focus on the fundamentals that come up in every discipline. It doesn't matter what kind of majique you study, they all tell you to clean your working space before you begin, for example.

 

[The God-King]

I'm a "compartmentalist" when it comes to the occult lol. For spirit work I use Grimoire Tradition (except for my ancestors), for basic spells I use hoodoo, for more involved rituals since I'm a classical Hermeticist by religion (no, not the Kybalion nonsense) I'll use Graeco-Egyptian ceremonialism, much like we see in the PGM. For ancestor work I use hoodoo necromancy. The list goes on and on. So I don't follow one system fully. I use different systems for different needs. But I never combine them. I hate when people say their practice is "eclectic". To me, all I hear is them saying their practice is confused.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I started from physics and ended up constructing my own 'occult system' based on the physical model I derived.

 

[OberonFromTheHills]

Like with numerology, you can find a dozen systems that all agree on the importance of numbers, but the correspondences don't overlap (e.g a "3" isn't assigned the same meaning by everyone). What I take from that is: We have to find our own correspondences. Same with astrology, you can read a million how-to-read-a-chart blogs, but eventually you'll have to depend on your own interpretation, because every one of those blogs is someone's interpretation. No one has the perfect immutable core that your practice ought to be built on, and I'm highly skeptical of anyone who claims to have such a thing.

I start thinking all those systems exist as egrogoric forms and when you use them you actually connect to something people use.

You can also use your very own meaning into that. But in that case you use your personnal will and power. You actually decide "The High Priestess represends your friend cause this is how you see your friend. That's not Artemis, that's not the Lady of The Lake, that's not Isis... That's your friend Jane. So mote it be."

 

[PinealisGlandia]

I start thinking all those systems exist as egrogoric forms and when you use them you actually connect to something people use.

You can also use your very own meaning into that. But in that case you use your personnal will and power. You actually decide "The High Priestess represends your friend cause this is how you see your friend. That's not Artemis, that's not the Lady of The Lake, that's not Isis... That's your friend Jane. So mote it be."

Totally. The use of a system empowers the system's use. The same tarot spread would be read differently by two tarot readers, but the one who drew the spread is the one whose system empowers the reading (outside of an apprenticeship scenario, where the reader is drawing while shadowing someone else's interpretation).

One of my teachers told me that "after a certain point in everyone's development, we all become chaos magicians". Meaning that after you've studied enough, eventually you use your own system that is an amalgam of everything you've found that worked. You only stick with someone else's system until you've experienced the parts that worked for you and the parts that didn't. After that, you abandon what doesn't work and keep what does.

 

[Theurgist]

Going back to the roots of a previous system that i have been practicing for years. Before discovering the origins, i was doing these daily rituals that of course laid the foundation and the order was much like a school teaching you the basics but after some time of this daily regimen it just felt like i going to church on Sundays.
The meaning of these rituals were lost and just recently i found that the original teachers were going at an entirely different direction with it than what i got from the order. Following the trail back eventually led me to Solomonic magic and all that it entails and i felt wonderful. No more lack of results, feeling that it was all in my head.
At last rewards for a long time of study and practice, if you can call it that what i previously did.
True knowledge

 

[ArchonLynx]

never followed a system really always took this from that and that from that and made my own system, formula, ritual..

no one system has everything in my personally opinion better to create your own than just reuse someone Elses standards and methods.

 

[zagan]

I'm always curious about other people's paths in the occult. I'm a bit of a basic bitch, so I've never truly dived into anything fully. There's so many interesting ideas out there and I find it hard to stick to one. I'd like to try this year to really focus on something, but I don't even know where to start at this point.

What occult system do you follow now, or have you followed in the past? What has made you change your mind on certain systems after learning more about them? What books have helped you on that journey? I'd love to know!

Reading the Secret teachings of all ages got me curious about kabbalah and magick topics, and then llewellyns complete book of Ceremonial magick led me to start with chic cicero's Golden Dawn, working through the elements and balancing yourself really makes sense, has solid rituals, Qabbalistic Cross, Lesser Banishing for Pentagram, Hexagrams, the grand and supreme version. They give you a good foundation to build on, but still has places that could be better.
Bardons initiation book has useful tips too for mental exercises, element work, but not really a useful system, not to mention all the blinds in Initiation and the Practical evocation stuff with his spirit catalog being coded was not useful.
Gallery of Magick books offer a superior spirit catalog to work with but they lack any system to guide people for over all development, leaves it wide open for people to just dabble and flounder around between books.
And Jareth Tempest's GoM like books on pathworkings and his work with attunements what he calls direct magick distracted me from GD work.

And lately from various source's and things i've read, Quareia's seems to be a more complete system and still has a number of ceremonial components but seems to cover more. She breaks the information up into manageable chunks on her website with the lessons and the main selling point is i havent seen her focusing much on words in other languages. To me one of the main downside of kabbalah and not having access to all the texts, hints theres always some other secret way etc is problematic when working through tree of life.