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"Don't call it a comeback!" Triumphant Magical returns!!

00:55 / 17.03.02

I have been thinking about getting back into the game. Anyone ever give up magic, cold turkey, and then get back into it later? I would be interested in hearing your stories, what made you quit, get back into it, and how you fared when you came back.

Is it like sports training? Where you have to start building up your strength and endurance again, to return to your skill level?

Or is it more like smoking? Just grab another cigarette and start smoking away?

13:55 / 17.03.02

Hi Jack

<May gets carried off by airport secuity>

Seriously though, you raise some good questions.

I think it depends on what you do when you are not involved in Magick. If you are conserving your energy and building it through other means or whether you are wasting it or stagnant.

For example...If you give up football to take up rock climbing, you might still have what it takes for football when you get back to it. If you are spending your well-toned body's time feeding it chips in front of the telly then maybe getting back to football will be harder and you will have to build up again.

I think there are some laws of physics that apply here too, something about bodies in motion. you know the one.

As for if I ever went through this...well, no. I have had a few dry spells but Magick has always been a part of my life, even then.

~May Tricks

05:02 / 22.03.02

quote:Originally posted by Jack Denfeld:
I have been thinking about getting back into the game. Anyone ever give up magic, cold turkey, and then get back into it later?

I was just about to start a thread asking the exact same question, o my brother!

Perhaps someone could offer me some insight. I had an interest in things paranormal since I was a little kid. I was reading about Magick since the early 90s. In the mid/late 90s I followed the influences that were presented to me at the time and went down the Pagan/Wiccan route. Then I discovered Chaos Magick and that made much more sense to me.

That's when the problems started. I'd had some very good results while working in the Pagan framework. Chaos Magick made me FEEL very empowered, but the results just stopped coming. I tried every variation on sigilization I could and they all resulted in: NOTHING. Zip. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Bupkis. Doo-doo. Crust.

So I thought the whole Pagan thing might be what works for me. But when I tried to go back that way, it was as if there was a roadblock. It just didn't work, didn't feel right, didn't get results, etc.

In the end, I was really floundering around between the two. And then suddenly, they both seemed like total bullshit. My mind seemed to snap back, like elastic. Suddenly, I was just an agnostic again, and Magick seemed so much nonsense. The early success I'd had just seemed like coincidence, outweighed by the later and more numerous failures.

And yet, as evidenced by the fact that I'm writing this post, I can't quite give up just yet. It's been three months at least since the last time I even gave it any thought, but here I am.

It just COMPLETELY stopped working for me. It seemed that the MORE I believed in it, the LESS it helped me, in matters lofty or mundane. It felt more and more right and natural, and yet it turned out to be more and more a waste of time.

Help a brother out, anyone? I'll admit my ignorance. Can anyone enlighten me?

Many thanks in advance,
YYY

Less searchable M0rd4nt

12:13 / 22.03.02

quote:Originally posted by Jack Denfeld:
Anyone ever give up magic, cold turkey, and then get back into it later?

Yep. I've done it a few times, for periods varing between a week and several months. The longest was almost a year.

Why? Well, when I was younger it was generally out of frustration. I'd plateu, get fed up, and sulk. However, magick has a way of finding you no matter how far you think you've left it behind, and something would always happen to reawaken my interest. My longest shutdown was triggered by relationship yuk that was happening at the time.

Now I use the occasional shutdown as a way of recharging my batteries and of fighting obsession (a common magicko problem). I recommend it.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

12:23 / 22.03.02

Yagg: The fact is that sigilization doesn't work for everyone- full stop. I don't know why, it just doesn't. (I'm assuming here that you've explored various ways of charging your sigil besides the all-time favourite, and that you know about the whole obsession-fucking-you-up thing).

Maybe you need to work on raising your level of consciousness. Try meditating; if you already meditate, up the length of time you spend doing it or experiment with different techniques.

12:53 / 22.03.02

I wouldlike to postulate a magical theory of mine: that there are two flavours of (human) magicians that can be mixed in any variety.

I consider magic to be an expression of the unconscious, perhaps sometimes the subconscious.
So therefore, ritual... sigiling... all that crap is out there to give you focus and be a tool to distract you (the conscious you) so it lets the un(sub)conscious do it's trick. This requires diligance and training, and is HARD. I'm kinda close to this.

The other flavour are the savants, IMHO. People whos conscious self is so wide open that it overlaps with what in an "ordinary" magician would be the sub or unconscious to some degree. Thus, the parts of the mind are conscious that allow these folks to do shit. tinker with energies. That sort of thing. This is intense. I think I might have been like this, but my ego clouded over those conscious bits to the point where I can't use them consciously.
This is a really neat mindset to have, but it can be a crutch- as doing conscious magic could spoil one into doing the sub or unconscious bits.

So yeah. If you're an unclouded savant- like cigarettes.
If you're not, like being an athlete. Or a chess master. Or any other artistic skill that requires constant training. If you're somewhere in the middle- bits of both.

my two cents.

<<edited to make me sound a little less sleep deprived than I actually am>>

[ 22-03-2002: Message edited by: Vadrice ]

13:00 / 22.03.02

I stopped practicing Magick for about two years in my late twenties – the break coincided with my Saturn Return. It also coincided with a very physical break in my ankle which was painfully slow to heal. In my thirtieth year I traveled to Scotland and made the decision to open myself up to Magick again.

During my twenties I was involved with covens and groups working with various types of Neo-Paganism: Wicca, Women's Spirituality, Celtic "Traditional", Ceremonial Magick, and others. I wasn't happy with the egotism, melodrama and hidden agendas that tended to take precedence over actual Magickal work.

At 27-28 I fell out with some people in the NYC Pagan "scene" while at the same time some very close friends of mine were moving out of NYC due to rising rents, police harassment, and other reasons. I became disillusioned and withdrew.

As to whether or not it's like sports training or a cigarette, I think it depends on the person. For me it was like a cigarette – I cast a spell for a great new job in Nov. 1999 and found my present job within the week! So the energy is always there, it's whether or not one chooses to work with it, and how.

Yagg: Your experience sounds similar to where I was at back in 1998. During that lull I learned about Chaos Magick for the first time, and – while I wouldn't call myself a Chaos Magickian – I do apply some of its principles to my dealings with Pagan Deities, which has worked wonderfully for me. Pick out the bits of each path that really get your juices flowing and see how you can fit them together to create something that's yours. Good Luck!

02:47 / 24.03.02

quote:Originally posted by Mordant C@rnival:
My longest shutdown was triggered by relationship yuk that was happening at the time.

Now I use the occasional shutdown as a way of recharging my batteries and of fighting obsession (a common magicko problem). I recommend it.

Now that I think back on it, "relationship yuk" may have done a lot to derail my magickal progress. Had a real "scorched earth" breakup right in the middle of all that.

Tell me more about "fighting obsession." I understand, in principle, how obsession is supposed to interfere with magick, especially sigil magick. On the other hand, if you've gone to the trouble to sigilize your intent and charge the sigil, how are you supposed to INSTANTLY FORGET? That never made a lick of sense to me. I've focused my will on something, now I'm supposed to unfocus it and forget that I ever wanted it. Obviously, if I went through the process, I really want it, and therefore I've probably already BEEN thinking about wanting it. Now I have to forget I want it. What?

I always thought the "acting in accord" I learned from my earlier Pagan/Wiccan days made more sense. If you are trying to "magick up," for example, a new job, you would then concentrate even more on finding a new job, through non-magickal means. Or at least be more open to the idea of finding a new job, perhaps through channels you hadn't considered before.

Somebody wanna 'splain this one at me?

11:16 / 24.03.02

I've focused my will on something, now I'm supposed to unfocus it and forget that I ever wanted it. Obviously, if I went through the process, I really want it, and therefore I've probably already BEEN thinking about wanting it. Now I have to forget I want it. What? – Yagg

I'll give a shot at an explanation.

When one casts a spell, one is directing energy with a specific intent. In order to build up enough energy to make the spell happen, one needs to focus very intently on the specific matter involved.

At a certain point in the spellcasting ritual the energy – whether it's a sigil, a cone of power, whatever – is cast outwards in order to do its job. The spellcaster no longer needs to focus and dwell upon the situation because a spell has been cast to take care of the situation; anything that happens afterwards will depend on factors outside the spellcaster's immediate control.

Think of it more as "letting go" than "forgetting". If you keep holding on to your spell energy by thinking about it, the spell can't leave you in order to do what you want it to do.

Hope this helps.

18:59 / 24.03.02

Yagg... Ierne knows.

Quite apart from the technical business of how the workings actually happen, obsession is an unneccesary weight on the mind, as MC suggests. It's best to stay light on your mental feet... the mind is a lever not a beast of burden.

Everyone has dry spells, or cold spells. Think of it as being a bit like the seasons... Your energy is good for certain things at certain times. Except the wider arc of your life that means that every once in a while you have a harsh winter or a failed crop.... times when your existing techniques for getting by and thriving don't work too well. Then it's time to adapt or to dig in and expend as little energy as possible til things come back.

Dry periods are also a great chance to get on with forgetting some of the unnecessary memetic detrius that builds up in the skankier corners of even the most healthy enquiring minds. Time for the mental floss. Not good to get into a big fight with yourself about your competence as a magical practitioner... just give yourself a break and let it pass.

Jack- I'd just dive in. if you feel in any doubt, find a guide (human or otherwise) you can trust. And what you do to pick up the thread depends on what made you drop it in the first place.

09:29 / 25.03.02

"Letting go," he reads, then slaps himself in the forehead. "DUH!" he shouts, then laughs at how silly he was for not figuring it out earlier.

In my defense, I've just never had it explained to me without a whole lot of wannabe-scholarly blahblah attached to it. NOW it makes sense.

Ierne: Thanks for the much-needed navigational aid. You too, Flame On!

Meanwhile, I seem to have stumbled back into "The Game." I wasn't sure if I wanted to, but suddenly it was as if I fell through a trapdoor into a secret room beneath...Now here I sits.

Hi, honey, I'm home!

Tryphena Absent

09:38 / 25.03.02

I'd stop if I was you, maybe you need to go cold turkey and just wait until you're ready to step in to it again. When you've got the instinct again you'll probably be able to do the kind of magic you want to. As for paganism and especially wicca I'm not sure that works until you find a God(dess) to identify with. I haven't regularly practised any magic for about two and a half years now despite finding a favourite god and it took me ten years to do that. I suppose I'm awaiting my own triumphant return... waiting waiting waiting.

19:11 / 27.03.02

I've just never had it explained to me without a whole lot of wannabe-scholarly blahblah attached to it. NOW it makes sense.– Yagg

Hey – I'm glad to help out

Beware of the "wannabe-scholarly blahblah"; it usually translates into "hot air" or "style over substance". If anyone has anything important to communicate to others, s/he will make all attempts to be as clear as possible, making sure the listeners understand what's being discussed.

As for paganism and especially wicca I'm not sure that works until you find a God(dess) to identify with. – Janina

Often a Deity will find you, and that's when things start to get interesting.