What is Real/What is Not? How to Tell the Two Apart?

So, I’ve been unable to practice for quite some time now. But, now I’m back. There was a question that I’ve spent the last two months thinking about. How do I tell what is Real and what is not?
I have summoned spirits to a certain degree of success but how do I know it’s not just my imagination? I feel that my experiences were real but a doubt makes me consider that they weren’t. I also feel that I unfairly dismiss any proof as coincidence or fancy.
For example, I feel that I can speak with these entities (namely, Paimon, Asmoday, and another unnamed) all through internal dialog. These conversations move very quickly. In other words, I could never carry on a physical conversation with another person so fast unless maybe it was scripted and rehearsed. The answers are always there before I can even ask in my mind. I can’t help but feel that after conducting a “formal” ritual, now I am in constant contact.

Which makes me feel like I’m a crazy person. How do I know that I am not crazy? How do I know that it isn’t all just my imagination or hallucination? Just typing this question makes me feel insane and a little silly. But, I’m sure if anyone would understand, it would be the people on this forum.

Keep a log of what they tell you, in code if necessary, and then check back every month or six weeks and see how much has come true in the physical manifest reality, in ways other people can also see.

Also, ask them for things that can be materially verified, and then follow up on those as well. I’m still always blown away by this stuff, and keeping notes helps, otherwise you’re apt to write things off as not being remembered correctly… our brains for some reason like to reach for the simplest solution most of the time.

Well thank you Lady Eva. Here’s a real one you can verify too. I have been putting off beginning to practice for over a week now. I’m in this forum today because this morning, I received two email from the moderator Timothy. The emails were repeats from a moderation I got on April 4th! I don’t think it’s by accident. I think it’s someone kicking me in the ass saying "hey what are you waiting for!?"
If I hadn’t have gotten those error emails, I wouldn’t be here. But now I’m pumped and can’t wait to get home.

Some notification e-mails from this forum do seem to take a long time to reach their intended recipient (and obviously I can’t view e-mail Timothy sends to anyone!) but hey, whatever works - dive in and catch up, the forum’s been very busy and I’m sure you’ll find some interesting stuff. :slight_smile:

Trust me, we are magicians, we have heard it all by now so there are not many things we find to be truly shocking or crazy. You have to keep in mind, to the outside world we ARE the crazy ones.

With some things you may never have the exact proof you need to confirm what was real and was imagined, so you can have to rely on a series of events. If one idea or occurance could be chalked up to possible imagination but other things happen that are in some way related to the idea or occurance and those can be verified as real, then that’s all the proof you need. Not everything in magick that is strange and unexplained will come with a future explanation of its own, sometimes you have to rely on a series of patterns or events and relate them in some way.

When you experience this first hand, you will quickly learn that sometimes we are given the strangest clues that don’t make sense at the time, but when enough other random events occur to show you they were related, you’ll gain a deeper understanding and learn not to dimiss them as crazy or your imagination right away. You will hold onto to every tidbit because as a magician you know, that most likely, if there was no proof at first something will eventually happen to let you see that what you did was real and it worked and that all those strange events, visions or thoughts you had were related in a seemingly unrelated way.

Being a magician requires you to be a part time detective and a puzzle solver too as spirits often have odd ways of relaying information to us that seems decrypted at first.