Magicians: Born or Made?

This thread has been cross posted to several other places on the internet.

I’m a bit of an elitist when it comes to magick. Okay, I’m an elitist snob, through and through. Magick isn’t something you “get” after a whole bunch of hard work. You have the raw talent and the drive to put it into action, or you don’t. Or to put it another way, anyone can pick up a paint brush and draw streaks on canvas. Very few are creating works of art.

Any thoughts on this? Agree? Disagree? Are you born for this, or can you learn it without?

Both, however there is a definite distinction between the two. I hope nobody finds this offensive as this is just my opinion and you are free to have your own as well, but this is how I see it.

It’s possible to be both, we have seen countless times across multiple magick oriented forums those who started magick at age 15, 18, 24, or even 31 or 45. We have seen those who were born into pagan or Satanic families and were exposed to such things from birth or even those of us who grew up in religious homes yet, we learned magick at very young ages like between 5-12 years old on our own, with our without influence from another person.

I fall into the group of living with a relgious family but I started doing magick at the young age of 5, not even really that aware that I was doing real magick. But I later learned that I do have some relatives who are very secretively wiccan. Everything I learned was either self taught, I saught after the materials on my own, or it came directly from the source of such magick. I was drawn to magick very young, feeling as if it was a natural part of me, that I had maybe been a witch or something in a previous life because if not, then why else was I so obsessed with all of this? My parents had me in church from the time I was 2 weeks old til I was 10 and they finally started letting me skip some church, then at 14 I stopped going all together.

They tried many many times to raise me as a christian but unlike most people, I did not believe what they told me simply because they were my parents and were older than me. Many times, I got the ever living snot beat out of me by my mom (dad never laid a hand on me!) for refusing to convert to their beliefs but eventually my mom realized the more she tried to convert me the worse my rebellion became and the more I embarassed her in front of her christian friends. But it was like, I was just immuned to indoctrination, it never phased me or changed the way I view the world.

So my point is, some of us can be born to be magicians, like we were just pre-destined to succeed and magick comes to us naturally. Those who succeed at first try or in a short amount of time they master a skill that takes others several months or years to learn. Those who seem to connect to spirits effortlessly and receive many prophecies or visions. Then there are those who discover magick later in life, bored with their current religious upbringing or unhappy with their life maybe looking for a quick and easy way out.

But either way, things can go good or bad. There are natural born pre-destined magicians that can master their skills with little to no flaw and do many great things with their lives and others, but there are learned magicians who can do the same. I have met a handful of people who did not start practicing witchcraft until age 17 and by the time they were 25 they could work wonders with their magick and practically move entire worlds around at their command.

I have also, however, seen those to whom it was obvious at a very young that they were meant to live a magickal life but they allowed indoctrination and schools to teach them that this stuff is not real, time to grow up now, because if you live in a world of fantasy and magick you will be homeless within a few months but if you come to our reality and get a 9-5 job that you hate, marry some bitch that takes all of your money, have 2.5 kids with her, a dog, a cat, and that lovely little white siding house in the country with your Chrysler minivan, then you will succeed. They lose touch of their gifts and suppress them and they slowly but surely fade away. Or some may even have their family members trying to convince them to use their power, but determined to not follow the same traditions as their meema and their mother and their auntie Jo-Lynn they ignore magick.

So I believe, some people are in fact chosen, not a sense like an anti-christ weird cult you are special my child, kind of way, like in a pre-determined by past lives and written in the stars kind of way, for lack of a better way to explain. And others find their calling later in life, maybe even some who did not come to magick until they were 16 were also pre-destined for it but their family was so controlling and pushy they were unable to hear its call? But either way, you can be a failure or you can have success and that, is ultimately up to the magician himself or herself.

How you use your natural gifts or acquired abilities are up to you. Some of us were not cut out to be magicians no matter how much we think we were. Those that are too full of pride to admit that their spells do not work because they are making mistakes or not following protocol, or not developing their magickal abilities good enough before they go diving into the advanced stuff but instead, they would rather blame it on magick as a whole, too prideful to admit their failure so they say, I’ll just call those others magicians a bunch of liars, say magick isn’t real anymore and give up on it because this stuff obviously does not work. When the problem the whole time was that particular magician, their laziness, their stubbornness, their impatience to learn things in slow steps, and their wonderful amazing pride they cannot bear to see put to shame because NO, they don’t make mistakes ever!

Yeah, you know the kind of people I am talking about. We have had a few of those here too. They ask for help, they get real answers, but when they learn that THEY are their only problem they won’t have anything to do with such an answer so they start name calling, cussing, pointing blame and saying those who tried to help them were trying to make them look bad or that they are stuck up know it all wannabes. So some can never do magick, they were not cut out for it, they lack the drive, ambition, patience, and personality for it. Magick is NOT a one size fits all thing no matter what you believe. Sure, anyone can pick up a book, read a spell, and pretend to be a magician because they’ve read a book or two about it, but can they do spells, evocations, and real magick? Or are they just talk with no walk?

I think those of us who started at very young ages were simply picking up where we left off before - and maybe, during some of those previous lives, we too picked up magick for the very first time aged 25, 40, or older. So the non-magickal types some scorn? That could have been us, in the past! :stuck_out_tongue:

I don’t believe in the Harry Potter model of some people simply CAN, and some simply CAN’T - drive and commitment counts, and those things of course are easier when the hunger for it starts out during childhood, and becomes part of one’s personality and self-definition.

It tends to run in families, as well, but then I think souls choose which family to be born into to some extent, which genetic options to have, so I don’t even buy that as a limiting factor.

Magick is a human birthright and some people not having it in their lives from childhood is to me no more determinative of their future than the fact some people are born where there’s no electricity - but that doesn’t mean they’ll never be able to have it.

I’m quite far from a commie on most things, but on this one, I feel like magick is such an innate part of being human (and even animals are believed to visualise wanted outcomes ahead of time) so, whether we started young and without prompting, there’s never going to be a better time to start than now.

JMO! :slight_smile:

I highly disbelieve that souls choose which families to be born into. Because your souls are still in some way a conscientious part of you, linked to your personality and thought patterns. I would have never voluntarily chose to be born into the family I was born into. I was violently abused as a child, more so than I care to talk about here but just know that it was so brutal, I was forced to stay in the house for 3-4 days at time until my bruises disappeared because god forbid someone would find out that my mom was beating me all because I did not want to be a christian.

10 years old, getting 43 licks (smacks) on the back of my legs, ankles, lower and upper back with a leather belt for talking too much in class or wiggling too much in my chair when I had ADHD and could not help it. Getting pushed down a flight of stair and forced to sleep in the basement on a pile of old clothes because I drank a Mt. Dew after 7:00 p.m. She is the reason I first started hating christians so much because after dealing with her for so many years, I noticed others that beat their kids too. Or getting jumped and smacked with a belt by someone you don’t really know too well because your Lucifer sigil necklace accidentally fell out of your shirt when you bent over.

So with my personality, there is no way in hell I would have chosen this family. I am the black sheep. My brother speaks to me on occasion, my other brother moved off and refuses to talk to my mom ever again because he got beat like I did, while our oldest brother was spoiled and babied by other mother. I don’t get along with my niece and nephew at all and the other half of my family is in a giant feud over “why’d you marry that asshole?” to a few of my other relatives, and the rest of them got sick of this shit and move off to California and Arizona.

It is a controversial belief, for those exact reasons (who’d choose to be born into a country where they have female infanticide) and too complex to dig into or attempt to defend, at least in this thread about a different topic - if it doesn’t sit well with anyone, discard it.

I found meaning and empowerment from the things I had to overcome, it made me feel less like a victim of hapless chance, but not everyone does, and beliefs (like everything IMO) should serve us and not exist as external forces to bring us down.

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I think there are born magicians, who are great at it, and then there are those who just pick it up, and are predominantly mediocre.
From my experience and from what I’ve seen, Spirits will most definitely choose and pick who they will work with and teach their mysteries. For initiation based traditions, the spirits will definitely block you if you simply aren’t meant for it.
Only certain people are meant to do certain things. Not everyone is a witch, not everyone is a voodooist, not everyone is a shaman. But that doesn’t stop people from pretending to be those things.

Here’s a truly provocative statement - does it matter more whether there’s an objective truth, or whether the person’s current beliefs empower them?

Bear in mind we’re not sloppily saying it makes no difference if you inject a sick baby with antibiotics or disinfectant, so long as you believe in it - we’re talking about non-material forces that precede actions and manifestations appearing into the physical world.

Is it not (to be even more contentious) a hallmark of typical Right-Hand Path belief, to propose that there’s an objective truth “out there” that humans must accept, and be defined by - compared to the Left-Hand Path belief that a subjective personal idea can, through an act of will, shape the material world and the person’s own potential?

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I believe my girlfriend is a woman who was born with the talent of witchcraft. To her it comes as natural as breathing, the results of which often happen before she becomes aware of the fact is she has acted in any way shape or form. I refer to this condition as being born as one of the “Illuminated”.

I on the other hand fall into the category of the “Architect”, who must set out in ritual his exact desires Expressed in exact framework and thrust out into the cosmos just so.

However to be absolutely candid about matter, if I had to choose I admit it would be difficult. As I see it there are pluses and minuses to both.

While I gaze in wonder when the weather changes based on my girlfriends mood, ( I have seen rainfall from a clear blue sky when she cries) and people who she is cross with become ill without rhyme or reason, I also see a lack of control and discipline that stems from such natural talent. The illuminated tend to take their gifts for granted and are rarely pressed to excel when surrounded by the mundane on a day to day basis and seem more often than not to suffer from a nagging conscience grounded in a threefold karmic law.

However as architects we have no such luxuries. If we desire a thing, we must specifically set out to achieve that thing. Moreover, if someone angers us and baneful magic is selected we know exactly the measure and scope of the condition and do so with little or no conscience. Any skill which we possess we have work for and take pride and its accomplishment. When an instruction is given in a tip or word of advice… it is taken with real gratitude.

The work of the illuminated has appeared to me as rather tenuous at times and perhaps even easily reversible should the operator choose this. (This reason alone is a sound reason for selecting to be among the illuminated if one had the choice.)

The architect on the other hand builds solid structures in working with others and uses his or her sorcery skills much like a bow and arrow. Once that arrow has been set free it will likely find its target but is not easily retrieved, diverted or extracted for that matter.

Are there others on the BALG forum who would admit with me to being amongst the architects? I’m not ashamed of that fact. Many of the illuminated that know me personally find my work extraordinary.

This is why I try to keep my opinion neutral on this subject, because how you came to magick, whether you were raised into it, felt drawn to it at a young age and practiced it behind your mom’s back, or came to it as a teen or adult, that does not pre-determine how good you will be at magick.

Anyone can succeed regardless of their history if they have the drive to succeed and don’t let any failures persuade them to give up too easily. I realize some people are perfectionists. I am when it comes to organization of my art supplies, the inventory I sell online, and similar things. And with writing, I cannot stand to make a typo, it makes me feel stupid so I am constantly editing old posts when I find any errors I missed as I always manage to miss some anyway. But some people are such perfectionists, the thought of making a mistake which is a natural human flaw, just kills their spirit. So they would rather just dismiss something all together if they cannot perfect it on the first few tries.

I used to be the same way, but it was not about having a large ego or anything to me, honestly I just had such bad self-esteem that I felt stupid if I could not get something right quickly, because I had people around me when growing up calling me names, telling me I was a failure so I placed ridiculous demands on myself. And having that kind of attitude caused me many failures because, if you don’t try you will never know how good you can train yourself to become at something you might not have been able to be a natural at. But anyone can succeed if they put forth the effort.

But sometimes, people do come to magick looking for a very quick and easy way to solve their problems then they get mad when they realize you can’t just say “I’m a witch now” then suddenly have the power necessary to make all of your spells come to fruition. I blame TV for that! And also, there will always be a handful of teens using the term witch or magician as a mask in order to scare people away if they get picked on in school, or in order to look cool, and those are usually the ones that believe they can shoot fire from their eyes, are real blood sucking vampires, or they have been chosen by Satan to rule the world, LOL.

My opinion. Every skill and technique is learnable through correct practice. Some people have the skills intrinsically, through unconscious ways of focusing in formative years, or right environment. For some this didn’t happen and they come to a decision to develop skills later in life. They’ll have less experience perhaps, but potentially more drive to succeed, therefore possibly surpassing ‘naturals’ who have not found it so challenging.

And this working from the ground up will therefore develop a much stronger base of commitment and willpower than was necessary for those to whom the path came easy.

Having a conviction that you’re better than others is a great way to make fast progress though. It can help make distinctions about life, people, and reality that might not be possible otherwise from ones inculcated perspective. I lived through a period of extreme arrogance and that served me in forging a stronger isolated self, which allowed me to rebel against my former follower mentality.

Eventually I found that limiting my progress as well, but these distinctions continue forever on the path of ascent… it seems to me that I can only look back years later and see how some things served me in this way.

Well I do agree with Narius on something. I have seen people succeed rapidly by holding an idea than they are better than others because it gives them the drive to work to a higher position with more authority and better pay, while others who believe everyone should be an equal because no one is better than anyone else sometimes never succeed because they believe everyone is equal convincing themselves that they do not deserve more than anyone else. CEO’s maintain that attitude, of being better and look at them. Bringing in 2.3 million a year and some of them sit on their ass all day and pay others to do the grunt work for them, while attending meetings on occasion to talk about expansion and stocks.

But even a “natural” magician can have that drive you mentioned. Sure, things may come natural to well…naturals, but since things are so easy for them are you forgetting that they get bored easily with what they’ve learned and are always looking for new spirits to evoke, new types of magick, new systems, new spells? So I disagree with that. Anyone can succeed if the drive is there.

I never meant to suggest that some people are just born being able to manifest spirits, sail around the astral and the like without a lick of work. Certainly, like any talent, you have to mold it if its going to be of value.

My argument is that some people, this is just meant for, and others, it is not. And no matter how hard someone works at it, if they’re not meant for it, their successes will be mediocre, at best.

I firmly believe that “Satanists are born, not made”.- Anton LaVey

It’s not for everyone and most people will be mediocre at best if they don’t destroy themselves first. I hate to be blunt but that’s how it is. It has always been me against the world and surly it will end like this. We’re Adversarial to the very core of our being and if you’re like me it’s been like this since you set foot on this earthly plane. The world around you is a blank canvas and it is your will to give form to the formless. You have a plan and you put it into action. This is your design, not the grimoire you’re reading or the system you’re currently working with. All of existence exists at your finger tips, not because someone says it’s there, it’s because you permit it. This is do or die because the black magician doesn’t settle for failure or mediocre results.

He/she knows this to be true in all of their being.

What can be broken must be broken.

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[quote=“c.j. lee, post:13, topic:5985”]It has always been me against the world and surly it will end like this. We’re Adversarial to the very core of our being and if you’re like me it’s been like this since you set foot on this earthly

What can be broken must be broken. [/quote]

Mr Lee, I agree completely in that assesment.

That I have been adversarial from day one I cannot dispute. The unmistakable arrow tip Mark of Cain on my skin at birth, desending from a long line of cunning folk.

Perhaps my outlook is simply while I, like a young artist I possessed a raw “skill” - my understanding was that it required training to hone my efforts into works of artistry. I never assumed I was bestowed with omnipotent powers without need for, or respect for education, nor allowed elitism to become my mindset.

Dabblers are a mortal danger to themselves, this is true. And only in your heart of heart can someone know if they are a tourist in the art of Sorcery, or an artist in training.

By the way, I learned a great deal with your solid contribution to AoS2. The volume has a place of distinction in my library. You have my respects.