inominandum

I have decided to kick off a series of posts on this blog about my various spiritual/occult influences. I will be making brief posts about each influence roughly in the order that they entered my life, and detailing the ways in which they influence my practice. Each influence will receive a separate post. Those that find these posts self-indugent and narcissistic are probably right, but should know that I am actually just bouncing some thoughts off the journal and taking stock of myself.

The very first influence, I am going to handle under the title PSYCHISM, which is not exactly right, but the best that I can think of.

No one in my ancestry, with the possible exception of a Danish “water-witch” from the late 1800’s had any kind of systematic magickal practice that I know of. That being said, many people in my family history were prone to experiences including both my parents and grandparents. I have already written about my first mystical experiences and spirit visitation in this journal and in Behutet magazine, so I will not rehash the details here. Apart from what I have written about, when I was about 10 years old or so, I began to perceive what I can only describe as Patterns of Probability. I could literally feel these patters in the ether or in the awareness and tweak them slightly. I noted that particular sequences of thoughts and ways of breathing or flexing muscles in the head would produce certain effects in those around me. These were my first experiments with practical thaumaturgy.

What is pertinent about this influence is that I had these experiences without training or the aid of rituals, drugs, prayer or any system or symbol set whatsoever. The reason that this is an important influence is that it firmly placed any religion or symbol set that I would ever encounter as SECONDARY to direct experience and results. This is one reason that I am so perplexed by the way people get so into combining symbol sets without really accomplishing something new or coming up with endless variants on the same rituals that essentially do the exact same thing. Use the boat to cross the river than leave it there is my philosophy, but many people seem far more concerned about what color the boat is, or if they can paint it paisley, than its actual usefulness.

Another important reason to understand Psychism as my original spark, is that I did’nt choose this life. I feel compelled to it by experience. I did not get involved in magick to be different, or as a counter culture statement, or to get rich, or get chicks. If wasn’t called to it, I wouldn’t do it at all. I literally feel that I have no choice in the matter. Once, for reasons I will keep to myself, I quit the path. I became ill, went mildly wonky in the head for a week, and had a bad accident. These all seemed to be threats by the universe for me to get back on the path, which I did.

I don’t think that everyone is cut out for it magick, and thus don’t see it as something to proselytize. I believe a lot of the people practicing magick actually have very little aptitude for it. These tend to be the magicians pushing for a more psychological magickal model, or Witches who would like to forget spellcraft and just worship. Some of the work done by these folks is very valuable, and they can call themselves mages and witches if they like, but what they do and what I do are to very different things.

Even when I began to take an interest in reading about what it is I was experiencing I read stuff on Psychics and Parapsychology that an Aunt of mine loaned to me. It was not until I was 14 that encountered the occult proper, which I will write about in the next post which will be about CEREMONIAL MAGICK.