What got you into the occult?

[Lightlindside]

Had a literal Christian cult upbringing (born into it), complete with wacky correspondences to get just enough of an occult system working while brainwashing for a selfish agenda (the cult was The Children of God). Grew up on the West Coast of Africa and in Brazil as a result. Our family left the cult after a few years of being in Canada, and I went atheist in highschool and the first few years of Uni. It was mostly a practical choice; I had lots of supernatural experiences growing up, but the cult propaganda system was dense enough that anything regarding spirit needed detangling. Liberal - but regimented - use of psychedelics, more writing invented rituals and art than I can shake a staff at, eventual spontaneous entity experiences, and research into the Western Magickal Tradition brought me back full circle. Now, knowledge of the hidden is just something I acknowledge as a part of life.

I wouldn't describe myself as a person who follows the Western Magickal Tradition because I've got an inherent suspicion of most historical Magickal groups. I recognize that a portion of it is trauma, the other portion is just assuming that it'd be pretty easy and beneficial if you happened to have enough power and money to use ritual in combination with mass propaganda to draw energy from a populace. Groups like this are important to me because they allow individual practitioners to gather and share knowledge in a way that can be peer acknowledged/reviewed and accepted. I recognize that gatekeeping is common sense when it comes to information that people aren't ready for, but I like the idea of the path towards that knowledge being clearly pointed out and articulated. I'm heavily indebted to people that have made information like the basic building blocks of The Golden Dawn system and Daoist mystical practice accessible. Knowledge should be free, tempered by discipline.

 

[vulpesarcanus]

I started talking to occultists online. And they say show me your friends and i'll show you who you are. Well, it rings true here, lol. I found myself far more inclined to want to try out magick and i'm happy I did. It really is a wonderful art.

 

[dcwilson]

My 1st magic book was "The Black Arts" by Richard Cavendish. I didn't see what was so 'black' about it, so I didn't do much with it. In the 70s I was a good Christian boy until the cult I was in (Calvary Chapel) decided it was OK to burn some books they didn't like! So, I was 'outta there'. I tried another small church, but it felt like death warmed over. Then I made some DIY tools and collected bowls and stuff for my 'TV dinner tray' altar. I felt I had been given the short shrift by an employment agency, and I thought they were dissing me because I was a Vietnam Era Veteran (I didn't go overseas). The only thing they had for me was commissioned 'insurance salesman'. So, naked and waving my car antenna sword around, and pouring various things between glasses and lighting candles, I sent "bad" thoughts there way and cursed them to let off a little steam. Nothing's really going to happen, right? The next day their building was on fire! I thought I need to learn a lot more about this. I got a Wiccan newsletter, Circle Network News" and found an ad on magazine for a Neo-Pagan group. I did a comic for it, then I joined it as a member. I didn't look back...

 

[CCCT]

Reading my dad’s old copies of Carlos Castaneda’s (admittedly problematic) books and finding them to be a more accurate description of the world around me than anything I had read or seen before set me on this path. I have always been aware of spirits and energies that remain unseen and unfelt by many and those books really opened me up to the idea that I wasn’t just totally bonkers and that there was truth in what I was experiencing. Also, a family friend who was deep into the mystical bits of many other cultures began steering me towards magic from about age 10. As with many folks who are genuinely practicing the the “occult arts” I think I was likely born to do this and it seems highly probable that I’d been doing it for some number of lifetimes before this one.

 

[Noth]

It’s so simultaneously fitting yet ironic that it was WF that truly got me into the occult.

The old WF, or the 4.0?

Because if it's the latter that is kind of appropriate to what I have seen, Taking on more responsibility = learning more and increasing abilities.

 

[Jonathan Strange]

I've just finished a re-read of the Invisibles
It's interesting to see where the fiction and the fact cross over in Morrison's magnum opus

For him it was a little too much.... he almost died. For me, I listened when he said to find the others and I tried.

 

[SkullTraill]

The old WF, or the 4.0?

Because if it's the latter that is kind of appropriate to what I have seen, Taking on more responsibility = learning more and increasing abilities.

The old one. Before that I didn’t know/believe in the occult.

 

[Johny111]

Lust.

 

[Iron2011]

I wanted to learn more about the occult and gain knowledge.

 

[fungus77]

I don't remember any specific instance/event that made me interested in the occult, but as a kid I was interested in witchcraft. When I started digging deeper as a teen, I avoided """darker""" things because of fear stemming from a Catholic upbringing. Now as an adult I've shed my fear and gained an interest in the left hand path, especially Lucifer.

 

[Sapientia_Lucio_369]

Being born into a heavily Catholic and Christian family, toxic experiences with conservative Christianity and their "anti-occult" messages and promotion of toxic lifestyles.....getting sick and tired of praying to "Jesus" and having my prayers end up on deaf ears, overall I always just had a rebellious "Black Sheep" personality. Don't get me wrong, I still believe in Jesus, but I don't believe in the Church narratives of Him and His life. In my opinion, Jesus was very likely a mystic who taught people how to meditate, not to mention in the Bible you'll see the same numbers popping up (like 14, 7, and 3), but that's just my opinion. In my opinion the "Bible" in its originality was a series of tomes based on Semitic, Hebrew and Aramaic magick.

Post automatically merged: Today at 1:04 AM

Okay okay....I'll admit, other than the hating Christianity part, me getting into the Occult.....started with me being way too obsessed with Istari from Lord of the Rings, yes I'm not kidding, I actually wanted to be like Gandalf and Saruman and let's just say, that "want" literally turned into me Googling up shit like "real spells", but thank God I actually grew, and matured, and practiced meditation, and started feeling the positive effects one I learned how to tackle bad karma.

 

[Philou]

There's this passage in Bill Clinton's biography about his initiation into voodoo and it woke something up in me like "If its good enough for Bill Clinton, then its good enough for me"

 

[crooktooth]

A couple of my friends are big into esoterica. One is a professional tarot reader and the other studies multiple systems and runs a local occult forum/book club. They bought me a copy of Liber Null for one birthday and that's what really set me on my path.

I had been interested and dabbled in the occult before, seances, Ouija boards, tarot readings, basic high school stuff. We did a few ghost hunts with equipment I had built. Most of it didn't resonate with me, but once I started reading Liber Null I was hooked. I couldn't set it down. I read it cover to cover twice in less than a week and then a third time to take notes while I read.

It just goes to show, sometimes a good book can really change your life.