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What was the turning point for you?

00:14 / 04.01.05

Or to be more specific : what was the one thing, or combination of things, that when you started doing it/them/had the experience/experiences, helped you to work the mojo a lot better than you'd ever done it before.

Awakening? Starting to regularly do LBRP's? Finding your guide? Finding Thelema/Wicca/Voudon/Chaos Magick/Crowley's teachings/RAW's teachings/Sigils/Tarot/God/Goddess/Yourself/Aliens/Love/Focus/Totem Animal/Invisibles/Secret Sigils in Pokemon cards/Teh Matrix/Funky Hot Sex God/Goddess/etc/etc/etc. The list is endless.

This is obscure I know, but I think it could be interesting.

I'm not sure if I've even had this yet so I won't say anything. This could have some good insights for us less versed in the ways of the hidden and I'm dying to find out what some of you put down, so don't be shy.

01:06 / 04.01.05

To be totally honest, I'll say that my turning point will be turning fear into confidence.

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02:06 / 04.01.05

When I was very young I read a book at the school library called "Black Magic, White Magic" and though I can't remember the contents I recall it being very fascinating. Such began my on again, off again interest in the occult. However, it was the combination of The Matrix spliced with "The Invisibles" that got me practicing and saw me delving deeper into the subject (prior to that point everything I knew about magic I knew from reading on-line Wicca websites, so I was pretty green).

Having said that, I've been practicing magic all my life but it took the above to help me realize that fact. Sometimes it helps to glue names on to the Odd.

rising and revolving

03:29 / 04.01.05

Good topic.

I think I've already mentioned it on here, but the big turning point for me was giving up smoking. Totally transformed my worldview, by making me realise that my will was strong enough to actually cnange my life - and my way of thinking. Learning that was step one in taking a whole bunch of dabbling and theory accumulated over the last ten years and turning it into a magical lifestyle.

03:39 / 04.01.05

Having said that, I've been practicing magic all my life but it took the above to help me realize that fact.

I've heard something like this before, that's pretty interesting. (that they came to a realization that they'd been practising magick a lot longer than they realized, or that they'd been initiated years before when they came to the realization.)

Thanks James.

After having time to think I guess that my turning point has already happened at some point last year. Probably with the initiatory experience I had. Also, Gypsy Lantern has given me some lessons that have really helped me. (and has endured a good few rambling PM's from me.) If any moment comes in the future though that helps me to really step up my workrate, it will probably be after I've gathered together more energy after severing ties with some of my current attachements. Or it could also be a matter of putting more effort into what I'm doing on a daily basis.

I am feeling more confident though overall, just a little unbalanced. Maybe why I created this thread, I don't know.

Clarity beckons.......

03:49 / 04.01.05

I think I've already mentioned it on here, but the big turning point for me was giving up smoking.

Wow, I cannot explain how relevant that is to a lot of my own problems right now. I'm trying to cut down smoking as much as possible and have the feeling that it'll be a huge step if I can control the habit. I like a smoke from time to time, but if I can control the habit and smoke one every now and then I'm sure I'll be well on the way to feeling a lot better.

I like the clarity, confidence, surge in energy levels and better feeling of not smoking as much, it's really cool and like you said, transforming. I'm doing ok with cutting down at the moment too (as in totally stalking the habit as much as possible, I'm going to town on the fucker) and my willpowers getting stronger by the hour, it's a great feeling.

trouser the trouserian

04:24 / 04.01.05

Good topic Vahku.

An early turning point for me was leaving home and going to polytechnic, where I met a woman doing a Ph.D who was a member of the Order of the Cubic Stone (magical order). We became friends, and I used to visit her regularly for occult discussions. She wasn't a 'teacher' (at least not formally), or someone I was very close to emotionally, just someone who I could have a good conversation with.

09:02 / 04.01.05

Hi guys I've been hanging around this forum for a long time but naver had the time to actually say something...But I really liked this thread so I had to give my 2p...
I agree compleately that once you realise that magick IS there you feel that you've been praticing all along. It is just normal, and that does't apply just to "us" but to everyone. We (humans) are irrational beings and whenever we wish something to happen, we are matter-of-factly doing magick, all it takes is the realisation that you are doing it on pourpose, it is like a baby learning to talk, at first it's just gibberish but later he picks up the grammar and vocabulary and does the same thing basically but now he is communicating.
Personally I also think that "initiation never ends" because you simply don't turn into a magician, you become one...and the process of becoming is a journey. Some events are of course stronger and might be seen as a starting point but they are bigger steps on the stairs we are climbing, where we've been all along.

15:36 / 04.01.05

A big turning point for me was when I was 11, and had taken a book on "Black Magic" out from my school library (really). Now, one of my friends was having her life made miserable by an older kid. So I found what looked like a nice hex, lit some candles, did the spell, and the next day, his pen mysteriously exploded in his face. No injuries, but I heard it was a big mess. Maybe a year later, I did a healing ritual for one of my father's friends that also worked--that one was from my heart, not a book, and it gave me an idea of how magic works.

I didn't start practicing regularly (and responsibly!) until I was in college. I agree that initiation never ends. The way I practice magic has evolved many times through the years, and I'm sure it will continue.

Quitting smoking (nine years ago!) was a big change, and that ultimate feeling of accomplishment was great, but I NEVER want to do it again.

18:13 / 04.01.05

A. Quitting some 34 illegal substances, (I actually counted), and finding twelve step programs to be horribly dreary and religious. This led to a questioning of God, and the nature of the universe, which led to a questioning of force and will, which led to.... well, you get the picture. The people in the twelve step programs that I left? They thought I was the devil...

B. Piss-osity over the culture.

18:21 / 04.01.05

BTW, that's what got me out of dabbling, what got me started was a nice little book, "Magic: An Occult Primer",(now long out of print), that I got out of all things, a grocery store. My mother found it and gleefully tore it up, but the damage was already done.........

Skeleton Camera

20:21 / 04.01.05

This bears eerie similarity to Goodness Gracious' "Soul Survival" thingie...

The Invisibles made it practical and glamourous, which was inspiration enough to begin attempting it with regularity. After that it began to seriously work. And it helped me survive a breakdown.

21:11 / 04.01.05

" I've heard something like this before, that's pretty interesting. (that they came to a realization that they'd been practising magick a lot longer than they realized, or that they'd been initiated years before when they came to the realization.)"

I think that's pretty common actually.

It's like the first time you hear a certain song, and feel like you've always known it without ever truly realizing. (I had that with Joy Division, for example).

For me, some of those "a-ha" moments were taking up martial arts, reading the Tao Te Ching and (later) The Invisibles. But I really couldn't say if there was ever really a turning point as such. It's just something I grew into; most of the conscious effort consisted of relearning things I'd forgotten.

11:36 / 05.01.05

Probably for me it was contacting people in TOPY (Temple of Psychick Youth) back in the early 90s, who I wrote to around the time of the "Despatches" debacle (Gen P Orridge got accused of running a satanic child abuse cult on a Channel 4 documentary). I read an interview with them in one of the zillions of fanzines and mail stuff that was going around at the time, and was in the habit of writing to anyone who seemed strange and exciting. I got my first pointers as to magickal books to read, first bit of discussion on this kind of thing, but more importantly than that, got to meet some like-minded souls in the flesh, many of whom are still friends. Funny, was looking over old correspondence a few night ago, smiling with a mix of senimentality and embarassment.

Having said that, was interested in all this stuff a bit before, I had an interest in altered states 'cos of odd experiences...

11:51 / 05.01.05

Just realised I misread your inital post Vakhu - I read it as "what helpd you work it better" rather than "what got you interested". As to the former, I'm not sure, have to think about it...probably getting a bit of experience and realising magick was never like what I'd just been reading (even if I was followign instructions), or what I expected, so thinking for myself a bit (still have problems with this from time to time). Trying to pin it down to a specifc experience, will have to think more.

Unconditional Love

10:35 / 06.01.05

near death experience, if only i was more gentle with myself.

19:54 / 06.01.05

Hmmm, hard to pin down. Here's a few, in order of their occurrence:
Eating acid for the first time
Reading Cosmic Trigger 1 for the first time
Experiencing the IT at a Dead show for the first time
Eating Ayahuasca
Experiencing the IT at a rave for the first time
Experiencing the IT at Burning Man
Watching my wife's father die
Watching my wife's mother die

As in the "Initiation never ends" thread, I find that I keep having new experiences that simultaneously reinforce and undermine my magickal world.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

07:33 / 07.01.05

Getting my Reiki 1 attunement helped a lot with some stuff. Mostly, though, I still feel like I'm just starting out. Every day, beginning from the beginning, all over again.

09:00 / 07.01.05

What Mordant said. I'd add using the I Ching to my list. It gives me the sense of having spirits on my shoulder.

10:25 / 17.01.05

Thanks everyone, it's been good and eye-opening to read the variety of things that ended up being turning points for you all.

-

04:47 / 31.01.05

really intersting what everyone says about always having practiced magick before knowing what it was. recently i remembered something i set in motion like 10 years ago and quickly forgot. it seems to be still acting, then i start thinking about the whole acting forward/backwards in time thing. but i don't know if my remembering is good or bad or neither.

my turning point was a spontaneous OBE to somewhere far away. everything since then somehow relates back to that, i'm still putting the pieces together. i just wish i could go back and do it over again, would have stayed out longer.

06:51 / 02.02.05

I would have to say that it was the first time I could get the mojo to work. I won't say what I was trying to accomplish, but never the less, when it worked, I was stunned, being the rational type, and I thought to myself, "ok this works, this is real, uh now what?" (Sorry for the run on sentance, but when I think of it to this day, I babble)