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?)

I like the idea of Chaos magick, although I've skimmed over sigilisation thus far. I suppose I'll look for some beginning sigils now, got any suggestions? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I'm still studying the LBRP and MP. As soon as an empty house opportunity (IMG:style_emoticons/default/king.gif) presents itself I'll be trying a pagan version of the LBRP. I've heard that the pagan MP is ineffectual for a lot of people though.

I'm sure I'll be delving into both right and left hand paths. My religious inclinations are towards the pagan, especially the Aesir actually-good suggestion! I'm Roman Catholic from birth and I do believe in the Christian God(though not solely in him)(and I definitely take exception to the Church and most other religious organizations)

I do not like Crowley, if anything he seems to have done nothing but bring a bad name to magick. Franz Bardon seems like a much more respect-worthy modern "founder" if theres anyone to name.

What are you doing to practice energy raising?

I think in my present location theres a lot of potential for druidic magick. What kind of end results does druidic magick seek?

I like the idea of Chaos magick, although I've skimmed over sigilisation thus far. I suppose I'll look for some beginning sigils now, got any suggestions?

Austin Osman Spare is more or less considered the initial developer of the sigil concept, AFAIK. I also like Phil Hine. Peter Carrol seems to be considered an important author as well, although I haven't read much of him, I'll admit. You will probably want to go to Chaos Matrix first and read some of the "What is Chaos?" files before delving into any of those three authors though. Hine for me is by far the most accessible of the three, but to some extent he still has a tendency to start in the middle and take for granted the expectation that whoever he is talking to will already know what Chaos is. Be warned...some of the "What is..." files there are scenesterish juvenilia, although there's good stuff there as well. You sound however as though you've already had some experience sorting out the good stuff from the crap. Of course, the "good stuff," pile and the "crap," pile are going to be different for everyone, including you...figuring out where we fit in that regard has been around 90% of the fun for me so far, I'll admit. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

You will probably also want to read some Terrence McKenna and Timothy Leary if you're going into ChM as well, particularly McKenna...if only so that you can understand the vocabulary of the 14 year old Chaos scenesters that you'll sometimes come across online.

More seriously though, McKenna did have some worthwhile things to say...it's just a shame that said things also sounded superficially cool enough that he got hijacked as a source of slogans and catchphrases after his death. Damn kids, these days. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif) Leary's material is also worthwhile...even if you're not planning to take acid. You might also want to have a look at some of the trip reports on erowid.org. I don't do drugs myself, but the reports there can get you into the loopy, more fluid mindset that I've read Chaotes generally find useful.

http://www.chaosmatrix.org/ - There's a lot of good stuff here.
http://discordian.com/ - This is more the purely philosophical side of things as far as ChM/Discordianism is concerned, but it's worth a read...for the intelligence of a lot of what is written here if nothing else. It's gleefully subversive, free-association thinking.
http://www.isohunt.com/torrents/?ihq=occult+studies - Get Azureus if you don't normally use bit torrent, and you might then want to get one of the collections of occult books you'll find here. Most of these collections will include most of the stuff related to Chaos as well, but you'll still want to have a look at Chaos Matrix.

After reading the above, from my own experience anywayz you'll either feel as though you've made developmental progress, or that if you weren't before, you're now officially hopelessly damned...probably some of both. The stench of brimstone still hasn't washed off, but I'm in the process of trying to get used to it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif)

I'm still studying the LBRP and MP. As soon as an empty house opportunity (IMG:style_emoticons/default/king.gif) presents itself I'll be trying a pagan version of the LBRP. I've heard that the pagan MP is ineffectual for a lot of people though.

My RL colleague in such matters doesn't seem to like Qabbalistic stuff in general much, which is probably going to give him problems where evocation is concerned...but I haven't bothered trying to change the Hebrew phrases or deity names, myself. I figure the rituals are old, they've been used a lot, so they probably have more of an investment of juice than anything I could come up with myself anywayz...plus going with the default is easier. Constructive indolence FTW. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

What are you doing to practice energy raising?

At the moment, the Qabbalistic Cross primarily...although I'm also finding that praise of a deity of choice, (with music, preferably - I've got musical renditions by Krishna Das of both Kali and Shiva mantras, which seem to work ok; although you'd need to find something appropriate to whichever deity you focus on) and paying a bit more attention to my diet also seems to help. The word around here is also apparently that you shouldn't sleep too much...but I need a minimum of seven hours or so a night, personally. I'm only really just getting started in terms of figuring this out though...and there seems to be a lot of good stuff by wiccans in particular on the subject...so Googling will probably turn up more for you as well.

I think in my present location theres a lot of potential for druidic magick. What kind of end results does druidic magick seek?

On the druidic score, no idea, personally...sorry. Not something I've gone into myself. There are probably some other people here who could help, though. I've read a bit about shamanism here and there...but I have no idea if that and druidism are considered the same, at all.