Hi everyone,

My name is Mir (or Daniel if you prefer). Last year while studying Taoism I got side-tracked and stumbled upon the book Initiation Into Hermetics by Franz Brandon. I had just recently begun learning about other belief systems, having been a devoted Christion for most of my life. Catholic I would say, though I didn't attend mass all that much. When I was about eighteen I saw the movie Mists of Avalon and later read the book it was based on and it made me start to look into Paganism and rethink my beliefs. Most of the people in my environment are atheists and the few that are not are Christians, so I didn't really feel at home in the religion but it still fascinated me. I also started reading up on Oriental belief systems like Buddhism and Daoism, and while they also had some good points to them they never really felt right either. At twenty, I had still not found a new religion that felt right and even though Christianity didn't fully agree with me anymore either I still kept to it, since it was familiar. Then I found IIC and read a couple of chapters in it, tried some exercises but eventually stopped making time for it. Now I'm giving it another shot and it's going amazingly well, so I guess I am ready to learn at this point of my life, which is precisely why I am here. Since there are so few people over here I can spiritually relate to I hope to find some new friends and mentors here to debate with me and teach me. I've decided to take it slow this time and meditate on the theory for at least a week before I move on to practice. My original plan was to lurk here for a while and only register after I'd started the practice and booked some succes with it, but for some reason I felt compelled to register now, so here I am.

Even during my Christian period I've dabbled a bit with meditation and visualising, but that's as far as my abilities go. As for my knowledge, I only have a very basic understanding of most religions and even that bit surpasses my knowledge about Magick. My questions will be plenty and I hope some of you will be able to put up with them. Speaking about questions, here are some as warming up:

- What is a practitioner of Magick called, is there a general term (magician, mystic, hermetic,...)? The only way I could describe myself is as a seeker, but I'd like to know what you call yourselves.
- Is it possible that I have somehow ... met ... some of you already in a some way? I first thought it was because of the lurking, but I've never felt like this before when registering for a forum. As if I'm going to meet with people I already know or have known. Perhaps it's just the power of suggestion, though.

Thanks for reading and merry meet!

-- Edit --
To be a bit more specific about what I would like to learn: for starters I would like to be able to heal effectively. I'm healthy enough myself, but both my mother and my girlfriend have lots of negativity resulting mainly from the way they have been treated in the past. This negativity greatly affects their mental and physical health and they don't achieve anything using traditional medicine since they are both treating the symptoms instead of the cause. If possible, I would like to find a way to heal both of them, be it psychologically, energetically or whatever else works. If someone could recommend a path that will help me to eventually get there (I know it will take time), I would greatly appreciate it.

This post has been edited by Mir: Oct 12 2010, 05:58 PM