Introductions... Are A B!#*h Options

Hello all! You can call me Mace, I'm from an tiny secluded town in the Pacific Northwest, and in exactly 5 days i will be legal to smoke, gamble, and sign up for a credit card. Not that I plan to do any of them, unless of course you have a turkish chocolate cigar handy. Damn they're good (IMG:style_emoticons/default/thumbsup.gif)

I've been interested in the occult (magick, otherkin, etc...) since i was very young. I've first dabbled in the occult about two and a half years ago, then off and on since then, though whenever I've started to get serious i then proceed to be swept up in other events going on in my life. I believe that ritualistic magic is very effective for myself as it tends to focus my easily distracted mind. I am ,however, more interested in those more direct paths to manipulating the world around us.

I would be grateful to anyone who is willing to share effective methods for balancing oneself. I believe that some of my attributes result from some kind of inbalance. For instance: my temperature hovers around 96.8, and my blood pressure is 58/104. Stimulants and depressants have inverse effects on me, caffeine=sleep, alcohol=energetic. Strangely I seem to have no pressure points. My body metabolises things very quickly. I have a mild case of OCPD and I test out as highly gifted. I pan out as a highly gifted procrastinator.

As far as paranormal experiences, I have had a few minor run ins but nothing extraordinary. I talked to some kind of entity(ghost or otherwise) named Bones from ages 2-4. I would write it off as a normal imaginary friend, but my mother tells me that my conversations were much too fleshed out to be the product of a toddler, and that i could see this "Bones". Personally I have no recollection of this guy. Is there a way to tap into this former connection? I still live in the same house. At 4, my brother made me watch the movie Leprechaun, which really scared me at the time (now the little ugly thing is either funny or completely lame). So, from 4-12 I lived in fear of what the darkness held. Most of the time i was just paranoid, but several times i had real physical encounters with something. A product of my experiences from an earlier period of my life maybe? Who knows. At 15 I became extremely fascinated by vampires. A little surf online and I was among fellow teenagers who believed that they were BECOMING vampires (IMG:style_emoticons/default/zombie.gif) . Their signs of "awakening" were traits that i possessed (good night vision, low body temp, slow pulse, paleness, sharp canines, thirst for blood? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/whistling.gif) ) Luckily I decided that i wasn't an awakening blood sucker and resumed sunbathing. In Belgium,where i spent my junior year on exchange, (learned french, made some great friends, visited 50-100 bars, learned how to dress, and travelled a bit) I was however certifiably attacked by a vampire. I awoke briefly in the night to an opened window, a dark and distinctively female presence crushing me down, and a sharp pain in my neck before struggling briefly and falling back unconscious. The next morning i was incredibly weak and a quick look in the mirror revealed a set of bite marks on my neck. Whatever attacked me certainly wasn't a confused awakening adolescent so despite not being one, i have had a vampiric encounter.

Being in Belgium must have affected my biology somehow, because my body has been functioning differently ever since. I can no longer stay up for endless amounts of time without tiring(84 hours was my record), endure cold, or even apparently create psi balls. I've actually started to have normal reactions to medicine(never used to) which might actually be a positive. If you have an idea why these changes happened or how to reverse them I'd be happy to hear it.

Alrighty, I'll wrap it up with a normal short biography(probably should be at the beginning, huh?). I am the youngest cousin in an extended Catholic family of 50 (in a town with less than 1k people). I am a scholar-athlete, i play football, basketball, track, rugby(in Belgium), and golf, albeit my school being in the smallest sports classification (IMG:style_emoticons/default/showoff.gif) . I am President of the NHS and the student body. I'm a voracious reader, an occasional hunter, a music lover, a fitness freak, a song writer, an aspiring novelist, and a multi-college applicant(15of them). Lest you think I'm rich because of exchange, know that my mother is a janitor and my dad is 500 miles away and unemployed. I work for my money, I've done it for the past 4 years. And lest you think I'm arrogant, know that I'm homely(lots of acne)(got a spell for that?), introverted, and have too many other flaws to list.

Et voilà, finalement, le conclusion. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/004.gif)

There you have it. You now know me better than most of my family and certainly all of my friends. Any social veiling or dishonesty was stripped away for the writing of this. Perhaps in the reading of it, you've already grown to like or dislike me. If the latter, I urge you to please delay your final judgment. I'm not always like this. Promise.

Now that you know of some of my experiences, problems, and desires perhaps you'd care to share some insight?

(Why couldn't I have spent these words on writing an admissions essay?)

Nice to meet you bym & Petrus! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/bye.gif)

In 12 years of Internet use, this is the only online forum I've encountered so far where I can honestly say that I've liked everyone I've come across. The people here are fantastic...and just through randomly surfing I'm sure you'll pick up loads of information about whatever it is that you're interested in doing, magically speaking.

Glad to see my post was well received here. This is definitely a standout forum in the occult community.

I'd have you figured more as an ADD type as your various medical symptoms would suggest. The blood pressure is more than odd...I'm not sure that it is possible, outside of being a potatoe, but...?

Yeah... I got the numbers backwards didn't I? I think i meant to just put the diastolic down and then ended up adding the other one at the end... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/fool.gif) .

As far as being diagnosed with OCPD, ADD, or something else? My mom is not the kind of person who allows medical trips to be made unless its life threatening. I had to beg, wheadle, and cajore her to get my knee checked out after a football injury (out for three weeks) and i think I've been to the doctor four times(twice for a checkup to go on exchange) I do have ADD symptoms, which may be either ADD, bipolar disorder, or something on another order entirely. Of course, if you read the vague warning symptoms of all these disorders, I'm sure most people would convince themselves that they have 50% of them. So, I suppose from now on I'll wait to profess a disorder until I'm old enough to make my own trips to the doctor. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/offtopic.gif) (You know, different friends of mine in separate parts of the world have very differing opinions on what kind of person I am. Yeah, some might think I'm a maverick (IMG:style_emoticons/default/irvine.gif) but others think I'm super quiet, others that I'm a barhopping meat head, and a few others I'm sure just think I'm crazy) (I've had a problem like that for a while. I suppose it comes from being a dilettante in so many different areas and then blundering into all these abundant stereotypes)

I am, however, very interested in your vampiric encounter. Alot of said encounters tend to be dramatized for any number of reasons, legitimate or otherwise.

Well really theres not much else to be told. There was little sound. She(I'm sure of it) was immensely stronger than me, my head was forced to the side, i felt a press against my neck, and then i just sort of blacked out. I did have a strong urge for her to return for the next two days but then it faded away and afterwards I thought it strange that I had wanted a return visit. I scrutinized people on the street to see if i could somehow sense if it was her. I guess I was just an In-N-Out burger and shake, no mystical experience. Kind of brings it home that you don't want to mess with those kind of creatures though, if they can subdue you so easily.

Is there any particular subtopic that's caught your eye?

You know really I'm just trying to build a base at the moment. Most of the discussions seem to be on summoning different spirits, entities, and on creating servitors. The idea of dealing with something like that actually scares me, no matter how benevolent the summoned being is. Being terrified of things that hide in the dark for nearly a decade might have something to do with it.

I know I'll have to deal with it sooner or later if i want to pursue magick, but i want the power to come from ME. Gaining power from an entity might be more acceptable than constantly demanding tasks though. How would an entity react to someone with an inherent fear of it?

I would like to be able to take my energy manipulation to another level. Biokenesis is interesting as well.

You know really I'm just trying to build a base at the moment. Most of the discussions seem to be on summoning different spirits, entities, and on creating servitors. The idea of dealing with something like that actually scares me, no matter how benevolent the summoned being is. Being terrified of things that hide in the dark for nearly a decade might have something to do with it.

Yeah, but one of the cool things about evocation is that from what I'm seeing, you actually ideally learn how to get rid of things that hide in the dark before you deal with actually summoning them. Other thing is that it's a big universe out there...and you only really need to summon things which will leave a stench of brimstone in your living room if you want to. There are plenty of positive or angelic beings, and hardly anyone ever mentions those...the reason for that is that as my signature says, evocation is used by most people as a form of thrillseeking, similar to skydiving or train surfing. A lot of the people who do it actually enjoy danger, and so that's why they summon demons. I'm only going to focus primarily on non-demonic entities myself...if I ever do go for any of the Goetics, it will only be if I've got someone else with me, and only after I've done a lot of research on the target being, to ensure that they're not likely to throw anything at me that I can't handle.

Evocation is only one kind of magic...Peter Carroll in particular identifies several. If you want something more minor first, maybe pick up some astrology or tarot...that presumably won't hurt you. I've also been working on getting the Qabbalistic Cross and LBRP down myself, as well as reading more about energy raising.

Another newbie friendly activity I've discovered is sigilisation. I wouldn't use it for more than anything minor probably myself, but you can still summon servitors and do various other cool tricks with it. The old school types here don't like it much at all, but philosophically speaking, I've actually found Chaos highly useful, in a number of ways. The only thing I'd advise with it is not letting it become the totality of your perspective...use it in certain areas, but care about form, ceremony, and procedure where appropriate as well. A hard core Chaote will probably try and tell you that you don't need the old school at all, but given that in most cases, they will have actually read up on the old ways themselves before rejecting them, that means they're simply trying to rob you of the benefits of also reading about the old stuff as well.

The other dinosaur in the living room that you'll inevitably come across (if you haven't already) is the looming shadow of Aleister Crowley, usually colloquially referred to as Uncle Al. I've read very little Crowley, myself...I've tried to read more, but I find his style very difficult to get into. I also find him insufferably arrogant and pretentious as well, from most of what I have seen...and in truth I have very little time for that, personally. However, there are some people who will doubtless try and tell you that he almost single-handedly invented the entire concept of magic, more or less...so don't let me or anyone else alienate you from his material, as I'm sure there's a lot there that could be useful. I personally try and avoid gratuitous hero worship of anyone however, myself...I feel that objectivity is good.

One other minor issue that you might come into contact with is the seeming abundance of Satanists in particular, and talk of the "right and left hand paths." I'm told that deciding reasonably clearly which way to go in terms of the proverbial black or white question can be helpful, particularly where evocation is concerned. I try and linger somewhere between the red/grey (neutral) and white areas of the spectrum myself...although apparently Chaos is generally considered a left hand style.

Since in your intro you don't mention your specific theistic inclinations, I'll say that you will also probably want a God, if you haven't already got one. They tend to be very useful if an evocation goes south, so I'm told...and apparently some people, when using forms of divination like tarot and such, actually call on their deity of choice to choose the cards for them, rather than whichever powers do it usually. Christianity could actually work, despite the usual expectations to the contrary; most of the formal evocation stuff that I've seen is related to the Qabbalah, which is of course Jewish, and the LBRP uses angels from Judaism/Christianity by default.

At the risk of sounding evangelical, if you're religiously undecided, I'd possibly tentatively recommend the Aesir, (Norse pantheon) at least for magical work. They're very friendly and willing to help with the sigil stuff I've done, and some RL friends of mine worship them perhaps a bit more closely than I myself do, and report very good experiences with them. My own religious leanings are admittedly a bit muddled...I hover somewhere between the Aesir, Jesus/Archangel Michael, (I'm pretty sure Michael possibly helped me for the first time the other night) and Kali in particular, in terms of deities. Thor and Michael both are awesome for protection, Frigg is one of the Aesir who was great for healing magic once, and Kali is...interesting. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) She has helped me developmentally quite a lot, I think...but she is also the closest I come to a "dark" or LHP deity. She can be very scary at times, but very loving as well.

Gaining power from an entity might be more acceptable than constantly demanding tasks though. How would an entity react to someone with an inherent fear of it?

It presumably depends on the moral alignment of the spirit in question. From what I've read of Bardon, he strongly advocates that an attitude of total self-mastery and authority is of paramount importance during evocation, particularly when dealing with negative beings, since they perhaps can tend to try and create a scenario where they are the ones running the proceedings, not you. There is a thread in the Evocations and Spirit Work subforum about appropriate offerings for entities...Darkmage in particular talks at some length in it about what she feels is an appropriate attitude during evocation...and I've found that Edunpanna, altpath, and Nero all seem to be invaluable people to listen to on the subject, as well...including bym too, of course. Mr. Curi is someone I hadn't previously been familiar with, but he has recently been offering his perspective as well...and he seems to advocate a very cautious and studious approach.