[Opinion] Why do you study and practice magick?

[asteraltair11]

Hello, everyone! This is my first post here on Wizard Forums, and I'd like to talk with you all about magick. I found this website while searching for a PDF. Since I started practicing, I've met a few people on this path, mainly because I chose the Left-Hand Path. I've always known it is a solitary path, and I am perfectly fine with that; however, I've always been curious about why others choose it as well.

In this community, I'm looking forward to discovering new perspectives and discussing what made you fall in love with magick, witchcraft or esoteric arts. I am looking to connect with others and gain new insights into the craft.

For example: I recently started learning about Hoodoo. It opened up a whole new world for me, and I'm currently studying the history and social movements surrounding it. It's incredibly interesting.

That is all for now. Thank you, and have a wonderful day.

Tl;dr: What drew you to the study and practice of magick?

 

[Veracity]

Hello and welcome!

I’d say I went down the rabbit hole of spiritualism and into magic specifically because of my childhood and later life experiences with spirits or entities. I needed to prove to myself through the shared experience of others that I wasn’t crazy haha. Many things that come along with sensitivity to spirits are pretty similar to what is considered schizophrenia, but I was never once not in control of my faculties nor did I not know which was reality and what was just something more. The automatic knowing, the hearing things that hadn’t been spoken aloud, the seeing things that weren’t perceived by others (or at least no one for the most part) had all led me to this point.

 

[giusma]

For me it didn’t begin with the idea of power or with the desire to follow a particular path like the Left-Hand Path. It started with a kind of intellectual and existential curiosity.
At some point I realized that many cultures throughout history—Greek, Egyptian, medieval, Islamic, Renaissance—took the idea of magic seriously. Not always in the sense of casting spells, but as a way of understanding the relationship between mind, symbol, nature, and the invisible structures of reality. When you notice that philosophers, priests, physicians, and scholars were all involved in what we would now call “esoteric” practices, it becomes difficult to dismiss it as mere superstition.
So what drew me in was the symbolic depth of it. Magic is one of the few traditions that openly treats imagination, ritual, and symbols as tools rather than illusions. It asks questions like:
How does consciousness interact with the world?
Why do symbols affect us so deeply?
Why do ritual structures appear in almost every culture?
Practicing magic, in that sense, became less about believing in supernatural things and more about exploring those questions in a direct way.
I also discovered that much of what people call “magic” is really a crossroads between different disciplines—psychology, anthropology, religion, philosophy, and even art. Studying it forces you to look at human experience from multiple angles.
As for the solitary aspect: I think many people are drawn to that because the work is ultimately internal. Traditions and teachers can guide you, but the actual transformation—if it happens—takes place in your own perception, your habits, and your relationship with reality.
That’s what keeps me interested. Not the promise of control over the world, but the possibility of understanding it—and understanding oneself—a little more deeply.

 

[System Error Message]

to restore myself and remember. magick is part of all of us and i practice direct magick not ritual magick. So i dont open any book on say witchcraft, astrology or rituals, but i simply visualise.

I dont view other entities as above either but as equals.

 

[ZanySpirtist]

Primarily because it's fascinating stuff, I can't get enough reading about it and people's experiences with it.

Also, for the empowerment. More freedom, a life more worth living. Dissolving shackles that hold me down (I'm a bit of a LHPather ).

 

[Nagaram]

I love the history of magick because I have always loved the history of ideas.

Seeing how people changed their beliefs or how an idea has evolved over time to where we are now is so fascinating.

Mostly I care about religious beliefs and specifically early christian beliefs. But Magick is an intrinsic part of that history so seeing how that relationship has progressed through the ages is very fun.

 

[Eris'AppleWorm.]

Its been a varied relationship throughout my life, I'm not particularly sensitive in the supernatural sense and was highly skeptical of anything magic for most of my life. As I grew I gained interest in the occult but didn't really know where to start or what was credible or "read" in the wide range of media on the subject. Eventually I stumbled on chaos magick and read Condensed Chaos, it combined with some others like Advanced magick for Beginners taught me enough basics to not feel completely lost and ive been slowly studying ever since.

Ive done more study than practice, it started as a curiosity than something I was seriously into so its only in the past year or so that ive been truly practicing and I'm still struggling to define what practicing is to me at times. Partially I started practicing in an attempt to better connect with myself and improve my mental health but if anyone asks my main goal is to accend to a higher consciousness and act like I don't know nobody.

 

[vulpesarcanus]

Curiosity. I tried out a spell and had got a result. After that I was hooked. At this point I can't imagine a life without using magick.

 

[deaddoves]

A natural inclination to the supernatural. The book "Headless Cupid" as a child fascinated me.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

How else am I going to find out how the world works?