When did you realize you were a wizard?

[Mathemoloto]

Hello everyone,

I have a question for you all, when did you realize you were a wizard? When did you know for sure, or had some form of certainty about this identity?
How did you realize this?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Mathemoloto

 

[Irish Bard]

A big hairy man showed me his wand

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

Hello everyone,

I have a question for you all, when did you realize you were a wizard? When did you know for sure, or had some form of certainty about this identity?
How did you realize this?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Mathemoloto

In the 80s my family knew a family, the Borders. This family eventually followed their passion and started a bookstore that became successful. Three books always jumped out at me, and I never sought out the occult in this happening - The Magus, The Golden Dawn, and The Satanic Bible.

I grew up Baptist/Protestant. I felt disconnected. I was into D&D. I was into art and hobbyist crafts. Computer and electronics, becoming even more disconnected from my family.

My Grandfather was an Archaeologist after a HS History teacher, and eventually became Chair of Near East Studies at U of M Ann Arbor. I inherited his diaries and magazine writeup (LIFE), and fell in love with Anthropology in high school.

In college I started out Anthropology and then stupidly switched majors to Computer Science, overloading myself with four high level CS courses I didn't have a math background to support it, and it crashed and burned. I went on to do Computer Consulting and it gave me money to get into the occult hardcore.
Now Ive found ways to do it being poor. That to me is a Wizard. Especially when they are insane from doing the same thing over and over until something works.

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

But despite my title, that is not my grade Not yet anyway

 

[Roma]

I would prefer to think of my self as a light-worker specialising in right relationship, but with an oobe fall-back of "life is never destroyed, only forms"

 

[Mathemoloto]

In the 80s my family knew a family, the Borders. This family eventually followed their passion and started a bookstore that became successful. Three books always jumped out at me, and I never sought out the occult in this happening - The Magus, The Golden Dawn, and The Satanic Bible.

I grew up Baptist/Protestant. I felt disconnected. I was into D&D. I was into art and hobbyist crafts. Computer and electronics, becoming even more disconnected from my family.

My Grandfather was an Archaeologist after a HS History teacher, and eventually became Chair of Near East Studies at U of M Ann Arbor. I inherited his diaries and magazine writeup (LIFE), and fell in love with Anthropology in high school.

In college I started out Anthropology and then stupidly switched majors to Computer Science, overloading myself with four high level CS courses I didn't have a math background to support it, and it crashed and burned. I went on to do Computer Consulting and it gave me money to get into the occult hardcore.
Now Ive found ways to do it being poor. That to me is a Wizard. Especially when they are insane from doing the same thing over and over until something works.

Cool, thanks for the comprehensive reply!

 

[KjEno186]

To "realize" is to manifest tangible results. A wizard, magician, witch, or sorcerer starts with the desire to know how consciousness manifests changes in themselves and the world around them. The actual practice of magic is an artform learned and understood by certain common practices including meditation, ritual, and divination. The new wizard may experience "beginner's luck" and then nothing seems to work. Persistence is the key. If you feel like your efforts lack results, do not despair. It takes time.

I'm coming from a place of deep skepticism, very much a product of 20th Century Materialism. About 15 years ago I bought my first book on magic, Kraig's Modern Magick, and a tarot deck. I didn't get very far since meditation seemed awfully dull, and waving my arms around 'vibrating' words seemed silly. The tarot deck was pretty, yet it made no sense to me at the time how it could 'predict the future.' I was also breaking free of the religion of my childhood which involved an intense effort to completely discredit the Bible. And I did, by the way, since there is no shortage of information available that takes and destroys the literal claims of Fundamentalist Christianity and burns them into a pile of smoldering ashes. (I have no problem now with Scripture as allegory and a compiled source of ancient sayings useful for discursive meditations and Qabalistic studies. I'm also now willing to accept a degree of spirituality in some passages.)

My magical reawakening happened earlier this year when I was looking for John Michael Greer's blog. I used to follow the Arch Druid Report for his take on the decline of Civilization that would result from passing the peak of cheap and easily available sources of energy. I never paid much attention to his 'nature religion,' though I have a lot of respect for anti-corporate, radical sustainability. Greer's

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has a book club, and the current book is The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Lévi. So I bought a copy and plunged into ... occult philosophy. "How deep does this rabbit hole go?" I wondered... I'm still finding out.

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

Modern Magick was the bees-knees when Kraig was still alive. Still find value re reading it.

 

[Mathemoloto]

To "realize" is to manifest tangible results. A wizard, magician, witch, or sorcerer starts with the desire to know how consciousness manifests changes in themselves and the world around them. The actual practice of magic is an artform learned and understood by certain common practices including meditation, ritual, and divination. The new wizard may experience "beginner's luck" and then nothing seems to work. Persistence is the key. If you feel like your efforts lack results, do not despair. It takes time.

I'm coming from a place of deep skepticism, very much a product of 20th Century Materialism. About 15 years ago I bought my first book on magic, Kraig's Modern Magick, and a tarot deck. I didn't get very far since meditation seemed awfully dull, and waving my arms around 'vibrating' words seemed silly. The tarot deck was pretty, yet it made no sense to me at the time how it could 'predict the future.' I was also breaking free of the religion of my childhood which involved an intense effort to completely discredit the Bible. And I did, by the way, since there is no shortage of information available that takes and destroys the literal claims of Fundamentalist Christianity and burns them into a pile of smoldering ashes. (I have no problem now with Scripture as allegory and a compiled source of ancient sayings useful for discursive meditations and Qabalistic studies. I'm also now willing to accept a degree of spirituality in some passages.)

My magical reawakening happened earlier this year when I was looking for John Michael Greer's blog. I used to follow the Arch Druid Report for his take on the decline of Civilization that would result from passing the peak of cheap and easily available sources of energy. I never paid much attention to his 'nature religion,' though I have a lot of respect for anti-corporate, radical sustainability. Greer's

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

has a book club, and the current book is The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Lévi. So I bought a copy and plunged into ... occult philosophy. "How deep does this rabbit hole go?" I wondered... I'm still finding out.

Nice! Thank you for your response!

 

[Jk666]

For me when I began to feel entities: demons/angels/others then when I realized that

 

[stalkinghyena]

Magic and the occult has been part of my life since I was pretty much born, and I went through various phases of identification. I recall, at the age of 14 or so, that there was a point when I was staring at Zeena LaVey's cleavage when she was on the Geraldo talk show back during the "satanic panic" days and I realized that I could combine magic study with my stack of stolen porn. I thought, "I am a genius, no one has thought of this." Then, as now, I am often wrong.

One should, of course, have skepticism. This is actually a magical tool and safety mechanism, but it should not impede one's ability to operate. On the flip side, belief is also a tool. Having an experimental attitude, IMO, is really the heart of practice.

That said, I don't really identify as anything now other than as a "student" of the mysteries. I don't know when that happened. I guess I learned to accept it over time.

Kraig is an excellent source for entry into the ceremonial/ritual side of things, especially if you consider his stated goal that the purpose of Modern Magic is so that the reader can pick up any book on the subject and have a means of understanding it. Also, he states, "There are no experts in occultism." This is worth remembering. In addition, he cites Sturgeon's Law, which is worthy of a tattoo.

But there are an enormous variety of paths that have developed in the last 6000+ years, some of them looking with a sideways sneer at others, but most often they stole something from each other and called it "traditional".

I you want a broad, general, non-denominational perspective of how magical "thought processes" work, you might try looking into Bill Whitcomb's Axioms of Magic, of which I will provide a link. I consider Laws I and V to be the most important. Law IX might be the hardest one for the conventional modern mind to grasp, but in terms of operation that is where the meat is.

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Whitcomb's Magician's Companion is an excellent work covering a range of different paradigms. It's not perfect nor authoritative (nothing is), but it is handy to have.

 

[Dre_87]

February 21st, 2010..

 

[Calicifer]

I was experimenting for a long time, but ironically it was when I gave up and said to myself that this is all personal delusion is when I seemingly passed my right of passage or something.

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A boy who plays with magic powers brings danger home to dwell
He does not have the discipline to tame his errant spell
I killed my faithless lover in a moment's blinding pain

 

[Amur]

I got shot in the forehead by a pistol from a close encounter, died and came back to life. After that I've been pretty eager in occultism.

 

[ballade]

I am just beginning and a beginner. I feel a bit a baby in the field yet and have not much knowledge.

But for the first time draw the tarot with the magician card so I think I do pretty great somehow.

 

[league]

I was born one

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

I was born one

Interesting you mention that, I was born technically a Libra on October 7, but a Scorpio ascendent with Neptune in my first house.

 

[league]

Interesting you mention that, I was born technically a Libra on October 7, but a Scorpio ascendent with Neptune in my first house.

Interesting indeed

 

[William66]

Hello everyone,

I have a question for you all, when did you realize you were a wizard? When did you know for sure, or had some form of certainty about this identity?
How did you realize this?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Mathemoloto

Hello i would class my self as a wizard.
I do follow the solomonic system, i would call myself an exorcist (magician people say nowdays).

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

Hello i would class my self as a wizard.
I do follow the solomonic system, i would call myself an exorcist (magician people say nowdays).

I agree. I am still a Neophyte stepping into Zelator, so my magic is limited.