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Where/When did you learn about magic?

Erebus

Well-Known Member
Just curious to see what led practitioners onto their current path. Was it a book bought on a whim? A family member? Something else?

Personally, my mother always straddled a line between Christian and Neo-Pagan. She believes Jesus was the son of God, but also that there are multiple gods and spirits (just one who is supreme) and that practicing magic won't land you in Hell.

She pretty much taught me the basics from quite a young age. She told me never to wish for something I didn't really want and/or hadn't thought through. At around age 11 she taught me about auras and energy work. She bought me a book on the subject. A few years later, she bought me an intro book into a very Wicca inspired form of magic.
For a while in my teens I became a hardliner atheist. When I came back into the fold so to speak, she taught me tarot and runes.

Since then I've branched out and explored principles of magic that she'd never touched. As I've aged, I started viewing magic as primarily psychological with maybe 10-15% "something else" to it. I believe she's more 50/50.
We still have discussions about the different ideas about what magic is, how it works and how its used. We've even discussed the appeal of the light for her and the dark for myself.

I've taken both an academic approach and a hands-on approach to magic over the years, depending on what else is going on in my life. I've often wondered though, If this hadn't been passed down to me, would I have ever started? Would I be another uncompromising atheist?

I found it interesting to reflect on the journey so far.
 

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
It's amazing that you had the opportunity to learn from someone else. That's something many (probably most) of us are not blessed with. For most, our exposure to the idea of magic lies only in the domain of fiction - as the stuff of fantasy novels. It's not a "live option" for serious study or inquiry, and if we get the faintest whiff that it might be, we are taught it is not something for "serious adults" and should be shunned or mocked. That's the general environment I was raised with: magic is only fictional, witches aren't real, and anyone who thinks otherwise needs to "grow up."

I was never one for listening when boring, closed-minded, unimaginative adults told me something was "not real" or "impossible." There are many ways to tell the story. Deleted a paragraph and a half just now, not satisfied with the words. Perhaps the best way to tell the story is this...

It is a love story.

A love of story. A love of imagination, of fantastic worlds, of embracing all things as possible no matter what others tell you. Yet, surrounded with those who think your love is ill-placed and foolish, a knot ties itself in the chest. "I am doing something I should not be doing," you will think. "But this is who I am!" you will also think, "I cannot help what I love!" So you continue to love, even though others tell you it is wrong and foolish. And to avoid the pain of others judging you, you keep it secret. You hide it, rather than invite mockery and scorn.

Yet how can one continue to hide something that is so important to who we are? To hide something so important to who we are feels like lying. Would that person really still like me if they knew? And we want to share the joy with others, to have their support. You tell a few, perhaps. But you feel isolated, lonely. Like a winter's chill, it wraps itself around that love and threatens to starve it out. You can feel the frost starting to set in, a cherished part of yourself slowly dying. The process is so slow, you almost don't notice, but there is this hole starting to form in your heart where the love was. The love keeps dying, but you don't know how to stop it. Is this just part of growing up? Is this something that has to happen?

Then, a single word prompts a journey. A revelation: there are other people out there like me who love this! And they're grown ups! Alas, it is too good to be true, isn't it? Surely you would have found them before (but you kept so secret, how could you have)? Surely they are just crazy nutters (but that is what those boring grown ups would say)? A hope is kindled. Maybe I don't have to let this love die? A question is asked. Do I want to let this part of myself die?


No. I want to believe.
 

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
Just curious to see what led practitioners onto their current path. Was it a book bought on a whim? A family member? Something else?

Personally, my mother always straddled a line between Christian and Neo-Pagan. She believes Jesus was the son of God, but also that there are multiple gods and spirits (just one who is supreme) and that practicing magic won't land you in Hell.

She pretty much taught me the basics from quite a young age. She told me never to wish for something I didn't really want and/or hadn't thought through. At around age 11 she taught me about auras and energy work. She bought me a book on the subject. A few years later, she bought me an intro book into a very Wicca inspired form of magic.
For a while in my teens I became a hardliner atheist. When I came back into the fold so to speak, she taught me tarot and runes.

Since then I've branched out and explored principles of magic that she'd never touched. As I've aged, I started viewing magic as primarily psychological with maybe 10-15% "something else" to it. I believe she's more 50/50.
We still have discussions about the different ideas about what magic is, how it works and how its used. We've even discussed the appeal of the light for her and the dark for myself.

I've taken both an academic approach and a hands-on approach to magic over the years, depending on what else is going on in my life. I've often wondered though, If this hadn't been passed down to me, would I have ever started? Would I be another uncompromising atheist?

I found it interesting to reflect on the journey so far.

Thats beautiful. I haven't had something that extravegant and personal. I was about twelve (1994) when my mother introduced me to witchcract and magic. She had been fumbling with the magic part in and out since her teens. She said her mother taught her some things that, in my impression, were a lot of cultural practices she picked up in countries she moved to (military) rather than "quote on quote" magic as defined today. Then my grandmother had supsersittions which we believed real like horse soes over doors, salt in corners, stuff like that. My grandmother passed away and the magic became less and less. There was family drama about my grandmothers funeral and about her passing etc that there really wasnt much time for that.

She went back into it when she went to this witchcraft store they closed down and made into a metaphysical store. She got this creepy book even though whats in it seem basic. I never liked touching it. Then later on she got the "Witch's Bible"' I think some things she is kinda of confused about when it comes to magic as in cultural practices say from Iran and from deep south of the states compared to modern magic which I hoenstly dont know where that started.

She bought a pentacle ring and it protects her, she says. I bought one the same and put it on my pinky. Mother daughter type of thing. My mother sometimes "contacted the dead" and she told me her mother said to her "now dont you be pull me down from heaven with all your devil work" (or something similar).

I got more interested when I saw things truely happen and spirits I remember years ago and things of that nature. It drizzled when I went to church and I found my mother still had those two books. I never really took it seriously until I actually met other practitioners I think Wiccan, Im not sure. Then I discovered the internet and realized people used magic as part of their religion.

My mother didnt look into paganism and she had a different view (based on non European views) of what we called witchcraft. When everyone moves out, she wants to move out by herself, emerse herself in native american (Cherokee) culture as they have Pow Wows up in the mountains. She said she will go into practicing witchcraft full time. I honstly dont know how she sees it now.

I like your experience though. Keep that with you.
 

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
It's amazing that you had the opportunity to learn from someone else. That's something many (probably most) of us are not blessed with. For most, our exposure to the idea of magic lies only in the domain of fiction - as the stuff of fantasy novels. It's not a "live option" for serious study or inquiry, and if we get the faintest whiff that it might be, we are taught it is not something for "serious adults" and should be shunned or mocked. That's the general environment I was raised with: magic is only fictional, witches aren't real, and anyone who thinks otherwise needs to "grow up."

I was never one for listening when boring, closed-minded, unimaginative adults told me something was "not real" or "impossible." There are many ways to tell the story. Deleted a paragraph and a half just now, not satisfied with the words. Perhaps the best way to tell the story is this...

It is a love story.

A love of story. A love of imagination, of fantastic worlds, of embracing all things as possible no matter what others tell you. Yet, surrounded with those who think your love is ill-placed and foolish, a knot ties itself in the chest. "I am doing something I should not be doing," you will think. "But this is who I am!" you will also think, "I cannot help what I love!" So you continue to love, even though others tell you it is wrong and foolish. And to avoid the pain of others judging you, you keep it secret. You hide it, rather than invite mockery and scorn.

Yet how can one continue to hide something that is so important to who we are? To hide something so important to who we are feels like lying. Would that person really still like me if they knew? And we want to share the joy with others, to have their support. You tell a few, perhaps. But you feel isolated, lonely. Like a winter's chill, it wraps itself around that love and threatens to starve it out. You can feel the frost starting to set in, a cherished part of yourself slowly dying. The process is so slow, you almost don't notice, but there is this hole starting to form in your heart where the love was. The love keeps dying, but you don't know how to stop it. Is this just part of growing up? Is this something that has to happen?

Then, a single word prompts a journey. A revelation: there are other people out there like me who love this! And they're grown ups! Alas, it is too good to be true, isn't it? Surely you would have found them before (but you kept so secret, how could you have)? Surely they are just crazy nutters (but that is what those boring grown ups would say)? A hope is kindled. Maybe I don't have to let this love die? A question is asked. Do I want to let this part of myself die?


No. I want to believe.

Nice. Is this what you wrote or something that called to you?

"Yet how can one continue to hide something that is so important to who we are? To hide something so important to who we are feels like lying."

"A revelation: there are other people out there like me who love this! And they're grown ups!"


Some things that stook out.
 

Erebus

Well-Known Member
Thank you both for sharing your stories :) I definitely find it interesting to see where and how people were introduced to various magical practices. In the UK it's fairly uncommon. The stereotypical view is that anybody who practices magic is childish, mentally unstable or utterly naive. While there are certainly people who fit those stereotypes, my own experience has tended to show people who practice magic as generally being more introspective and capable of out of the box thinking.
 
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