What got you here

[vito41]

Hi, what got you into the occult good or bad? What are you experiences that make you belive good or bad? An how do you cope if you are surrounded by people blind to magic and science

 

[nargile57]

Ignore blind people, all they will do is obstruct, sew discord, steal your energy and time.

 

[Durward]

I think, first of all, that it is extremely important to let other people be. Forcing opinions, ideas, facts, thoughts, etc., just makes you a petty tyrant. Wanting to force your ideas, or what you know, down the throats of others is some obvious cancel culture know-it-all unnecessary strife-causing BS.
First, I grew up having psi experiences of many kinds, and was beaten, starved, and even had an exorcism done on me for telling them future events that came true. So I KNOW what I know, and nothing they do or say will upset that or take it away from me. I have taken the time to make sure I'm not insane, and proven the things I do with third parties or other veridical evidence. So I don't care about skeptics or non-believers, they can say, do, believe whatever they want and it doesn't change my worldview or the facts. It just shows they have closed minds and are the average narrow human.
My experiences got me looking at the occult, and trying a few things, but I determined that most of that was specific to the people who developed the practices, and those who are like them, or cut out of the same cloth.
The majority of occult systems are then other people's beliefs to me, since I don't need or require it, and it adds nothing of value to me or my life, or what I can do. It will never work for me, just like religions don't work for me.
So, my inner security and confidence comes from being capable of many supernatural things, and like I said, I then don't care what the doubting skeptic crowd thinks about it, and I have no need for their approval. I am also past demonstrations or questions. Fuck the public.
Any insecurities and lack of confidence comes from weak practices and beliefs that have no veridical evidence and no solid proof that you could present to these third parties or skeptics. If the practices or beliefs were solid enough, even I might be supportive of them, but I only support people finding what they resonate with, because when they do that, all of it works and they have results that give them confidence. If you aren't there yet, you likely haven't found your flock.
If you find yourself falling into the doubter, skeptic, zealot pile and thinking you need to feed it or defend your practices and beliefs, you need a new bunch of people to hang with.

 

[Eliyel]

What do you mean by good or bad? Like were our first encounters with the occult pleasant, or do we have preferences on the white magic/black magic scale? I had a pretty painstakingly slow introduction to the occult, starting with about a decade of out of body experiences and a skeptical nature so strong that I refused to look at them as anything more than extremely intense hypnagogic hallucinations. Those outings eventually began to grow more elaborate as I got into meditation for stress management reasons, and out of curiosity decided to start trying to actually leave my bedroom instead of just waiting for them to end. When conversations during those experiences began revealing accurate information to me about real-world people and places I'd previously never heard of, then I finally hit the point of having to start taking it a little more seriously.

Coping with other people not being interested in magic has been pretty simple for me: I just have other hobbies to talk about. If someone's happy to not be "in the know", then I don't really care to change their mind. I'll just talk about board games or craftswork or whatever it is they do for fun instead.

 

[hollowglasd]

My mother gave me a tarot deck when I was a teen and down the rabbit hole I went
Then I took a long break from magick only to come back recently and down the rabbit hole I went