Overall I’d call myself a neophyte I guess is the right term for where I’m at. I dabbled with some candle spells, basic spell jars when I was a teen but nothing I considered serious stuff- just things for protection or good luck on a test or something dumb like change my eye color and win my crush over, but I’d barely call it dabbling as I wasn’t serious about it or anything and it certainly wasn’t the focus of my life. My family is relatively atheist and I’m a first generation immigrant. My parents immigrated from China in the 80s on scholarship to study for PhD. I don’t know much about my family history beyond my parents’ generation. I found out recently my paternal grandmother had a penchant for “witchy/psychic stuff” but nobody talks about it in any detail beyond that.
I didn’t reconnect with my spirituality or make the dive into ceremonial/ritual magic until around this time last year. Could’ve been that I was living a selfish life of opiate addiction and it took precedence over everything. It only helped me get into a trance but was everything for a while until I got clean on 6/18/2020 (my ‘official clean date’) with a simple multi-day ritual using a voodoo doll I made of myself.
Before that addiction life started, around 2015-17, I was starting to meditate and practice basic energy work, dream/astral travel, bought my first “occult books” that ended up collecting dust for the most part since. They weren’t helpful anyways. I later discovered this forum by accident after reading Evoking Eternity and the Azazel grimoire by E.A. Koetting books and googling something from the book.
The haze of addiction life ended last year with some workings I did to end that cycle and all ties with it, starting with aforementioned voodoo doll ritual which was over a week and had surprisingly less physical withdrawal than I was expecting.
Since then, it’s been a period of intense awakening (though not fully awake yet- rarely do I hear/see/sense clearly, mostly go off “feels”- also been told by a doctor who oversaw my care every time at this psych hospital I went to a few times during my rough patch that I am also an empath, which explains so much in hindsight/present-sight).
For the past year or so of early sobriety, I have been spending time out in the suburbs with my family. The backyard opens into some wilderness which I love and it’s been ideal for this period of intense spiritual/magickal awakening. Over the colder months, I try to care for the wildlife in our backyard (which costs about $200/week just for that) and have a beautiful rescue cat Baby I adopted in 2014 from a small no kill shelter in Philly that specialized in older animals (she was estimated 5 at the time and is now 12. I know I basically signed up for heartbreak)
At first, for months I was committed to daily practice for hours as though I was catching up or just ravenous for learning or crazy, but slowed down as of last couple months - mostly work included invocation/channeling with spirits (some repeating works include with goddess Isis, Enlil/Beelzebub, Arachne, Lilith, Azazel, and recently was told my guardian angel is Samael from a reading I bought from VK jehennum and I later confirmed with pendulum and starting to reach out to him for invo/evo. I always thought how it’s a miracle I went through a decade of addiction and can say I was so lucky to have never overdosed or had to skimp on paying for what I called necessities at any point- my cat’s insurance/healthcare, groceries for me and my partner, cost of hospitalizations, living costs…just weirdly lucky), evocation, energy work (more recently, since early fall last year practicing Kundalini), some baneful magic I’ll admit, and mainly a bunch of rituals targeting self-alchemy and transformation (opening my senses more, targeting awareness of my weaknesses so I can shed or alchemize them into something that strengthens, stuff like thst) or that helps me overall become a better person/more effective witch. During the day, I work/person-suit as a Data analyst (coding databases in SQL mostly) for a large pharma wholesale company (not my dream job).
I’ve astral traveled from waking just a handful of times- a lot of the travels I suspect are assisted somehow by a spirit during my dreaming or intense trance states but those are unpredictable and that’s something I really want to learn to do myself on command. I also have a draw towards necromancy and started practicing some graveyard workings/spontaneous psychopomp-ing sometimes when I invocate Beelzebub there. I would love to learn more about energetic healing as well as work on divination abilities. I’m currently in a 9 week intensive course on goddess Isis and an intro to Egyptian magic (at least that’s what I’m calling it. It’s called goddess Isis high priestess golden activation training something something)
Currently I’m unfortunately on a low dose of Seroquel for sleep, which is being tapered off by my new doctor who said I never should have been prescribed it in the first place, and I hear that one dampens the senses, so hopefully I get off that soon.
Sorry I deleted my earlier intro in hiding from a messy off-site situation that is now safely resolved.
Czar is a pseudonym from another life and LiSh are the first two letters of my last and first name - wasn’t being too creative there. Only learned my “magic name” recently