Where to Begin with the Occult

I've already made a post on the most practical bits of magic that I recommend everyone know - sort of a basic self-defense guide to make sure you know what to do if you get haunted or cursed etc - so check that out for more info, this is more or less a where to begin kind of post. Full disclosure, I have posted this several other places with or without minor edits such as on my Instagram under the same name as well as my own site https://courtoftheibis. com - it is extremely useful info for anyone who is hopping aboard the magical bus ride and has no idea where to start.

As your absolute first port of call, I recommend you learn as much about the occult as a whole as you can. I recommend you start with the history, but there are a ton of places you can begin with that, and people have been practicing magic in one form or another all over the globe, forever - it's actually only Western culture that believes it's not real by the way, and in many places it's just accepted as fact that there are metaphysical aspects to life. There are even pockets of Europe, like parts of Ireland, Scotland, Scandinavia, Iceland and Eastern Europe - even up into Russia - where it hasn't ever entirely died out, so the whole "magic and spirits are not real" culture is in a severe minority, globally speaking, and in my opinion is fading out as more people begin to accept the very real possibilities of extra dimensions, the universe, and - of course - extradimensional vampires and lizard people. Wait long enough, and Alex Jones is usually proven right. 

I recommend for any student beginning the path of occult studies to begin with your own lineage - it's just easiest and most likely for you to enjoy learning about. Unless you have a strong pull to some particular path like Egyptian or Greek mythology, or some particular historical figure in the occult like John Dee or Crowley etc, in which case go with your gut. If in doubt, or unaware of your greater lineage, just look around at ancient societies until one gives you tingles or stirs your gut. That's what's known in the business as a calling - some unidentifiable physical sensation or instinct that tells you where to go. Get used to listening out for that instinct. Most people get called to one or another, and if you're truly not meant to be boxed in, learn a little bit of everything, which is just as valid of a path as any other. There's just absolutely no need to settle into one thing or another and many of the most accomplished practitioners I have met and know of didn't end up anywhere near where they started, but journeyed through a wide variety of traditions, learning what they could from each, before settling into their own rhythm.

The next thing is to cover your basics and start grinding.

I consider the basics to be;

Grounding and centering

Protection, Wards and Shielding

Meditation

Grounding and centering - this is the most basic and important part of everything else. If you do nothing else once a day, ground and centre. Root yourself and stand tall, feel calm, centre your energy and pull it all in from wherever it is. Do it every time you feel floaty or wierd, and do it until you feel both steady and comfortable on your feet - I have been doing this for a good while now and it is amazing for your mental health and so also for your personal magical power. Conceptually you want to fix yourself between earth and sky, really tangibly connect to those forces and then mix them within yourself. The earth and sky are two basically limitless sources of energy, right there, all the time. Get used to hooking into them and feeling both stable and charged.

Protection and wards; shielding, wards, amulets, circles. Before you cast any spells, you will want to set up some barriers, and make sure your newfound power doesn't attract any unsavoury types. You can believe in spirits or not but you can attract them by performing magic without any wards - a lá the ouija board - and many are not going to be the kind of thing you want hanging around on a regular basis. Protection magic is just an intelligent place to start, and will introduce you to several of the overarching concepts that are common to all kinds of rituals and spellcasting, such as association and sympathetic magic - I will do a proper in-depth article on protection magic but for now, the very very basics are actually covered in my "Basic Magical Self-Defence" blog, which will be more than enough to get you started with that branch of your practice.

It's pretty important, once you have gotten used to being grounded and centred, and gotten some wards up, that you practice calming your mind. Meditation is as integral to the occult as being able to stand is to athletics. You need to be able to be calm and collected and fully present within your own self before you try directing your energy out to anything else. You need to be able to relax your body and mind and pay quiet attention to the thoughts as they come and go, and then stop them coming and be able to listen for anything that might be coming in from outside of yourself. This is honestly the practice of a few months to a few years depending on how dedicated, authentic and competent you are at your practice. Trying to achieve any kind of magical change in your life without having basic mental discipline is why spells and rituals are just not guaranteed to work for everyone right off the bat.

Properly applied meditation will start to bring up things you absolutely do not want to think about - and it's important not to allow yourself to suppress these things. This stuff is on your mind because either you're afraid of it or you've not sorted it out yet, so it's time, before you start to cast out your energy into the world, that you clean up all this stuff that makes you scattered. This can be quite a deep and involved process often known as Shadow work, which not only has occult remedies such as elemental balancing, cleansing, grounding and centring etc., but also can be eased using ordinary psychological techniques. Therapy, both psychological and cognitive behavioral therapy will help you with this. This phase is all about reclaiming yourself from past traumas, integrating the lessons into yourself and becoming a whole creature, aware of and in control of their darker side. Then, once you feel like you have competently mastered these basics you can tentatively start with spellcraft for things you want, or want to get rid of - heed the warnings though, and git gud at the building blocks before you start turning your attention outwards

Think of ritual and spellcraft like this. We live in a chaotic, ever-changing, electromagnetic soup that permeates this world, the dream world, every other universe in the multiverse and every other being and consciousness, both physical and metaphysical. Imagine that represented as a giant ballroom filled with entities and events all happening at once - you try to shout but you're nervous and scattered and you just squeak - nothing gets heard. Well, your meditation and shadow work is like public speaking and voice projection training, your protection magic is like a physical barrier that sets you apart from the milling crowd, and then your ritual trappings are your microphone and speaker stack. Then, with that combination of training and equipment you have the ability to start affecting a real change in that ballroom that represents the complex material/spiritual matrix, and getting the message out to entities that may want to help you. With no protections set up around yourself, as soon as anything can hear you, you will be a target for any unsavoury types that may show up with a smile and a friendly face, but truly only want to trick you (way, way more common than most people would expect) - so don't ignore any of these basic building blocks or you're gonna have a bad time.

This is just a simple, very very sketchy outline of what is involved in becoming a competent occultist. It's also the 5th part of my blogs-that-are-actually-reposts series that exists because I got started before I understood how to use Minds' blog feature. I'm nearly caught up now, and this article was really heavily edited from the original because, if I'm honest, the original was shit and thrown-together and this is much more comprehensive. It is still just the bare, bare bones though and a huge amount of entire books have been written on the subject and the best methods of practice - including one which I am writing in collaboration with my online coven, the Court of the Ibis. We hope to have that book available before Samhain (Halloween), so there's a little teaser for ya, but until then please do feel free to check out my independent occult forum https://courtoftheibis.com and supporting Discord - we are a relatively exclusive community and I like to think we have a high standard for conversations so even if you're completely skeptical and yet still quite curious please come and visit. 

I take any questions anyone wants to ask - I'm here to help and Minds is where I go to not just preach to the choir - I want to get the word out to the non-believers and help any of y'all poor motherfuckers who may be dealing with some metaphysical bullshit you don't know how to handle, so bring it on, let me help you - I'm 100% willing to be Mind's occult agony aunt 😸