What to post?

General Discussion
1

I want to post something, but what to post?
As I’ve said before, in my introduction to this forum, I was a part of magic forums before.
They did not go very well. Part of the problem was that they were mostly wiccan based so they didn’t jive to well with the things I was talking about. Another part of the problem was that I was young and fairly cocky in what I wrote, because it was something I knew about and had spent a good part of my life on it. But there was still much I had to learn. I am a bit fearful of repeating the same mistakes so I am taking this inch by inch.
But what to post.
I guess I will start out with the first time I ever conducted a ritual.
It was the initial circle casting/ self initiation in Konstantinos’ Nocturnal Witchcraft.
I don’t know how people here feel about his works but I’ve heard E.A. Reference him a couple of times in his videos, so I feel I’m in a good place for it.
Anyhew.
It was intense. It was the first time I had felt that much energy coursing through my entire being.
It literally felt that I had the entire universe at my fingertips and could shift it however I wanted.
I even glanced at myself in the mirror at one point and could swear that the colored parts of my eyes had turned and orange-yellow. I’ve tried to pass it off as being the light from the candles but other times that I’ve glanced in a mirror by candle light, it wasn’t the same effect, so I don’t know.
But that’s not the most fascinating event.
I was performing the casting on my bed that had curtains hanging around it and at one point during this whole thing I glanced to my right at an opening in the curtains. There, peeking in, was something. I can’t really describe it too well because I could only see it by the candle light. It had a reptilian fish kind of head. That’s all I could really make out. And the light from the candle was reflecting off and outlined its scales.
I was not sensing any danger from it nor did it rise any fear in me. It’s almost as if it was just interested in what I was doing. It was there for a good second and then “swam” off. I use swam in “” because that was the motion it made when it moved away.
My reaction was more of an “ok. So that happened”. And then I was back to what I was doing.
I don’t know who or what it was. Nor have I seen it since. At least, not that I’m conscious of.
To be honest, I have never been able to conduct a ritual of that magnitude of power since then either.
I have gotten little signals or ques after rituals to let me know that I was heard and that my wishes were going to be carried out.
That first event was roughly 10 years ago.
And its been over 6 years since I’ve conducted the circle casting. Events have prevented me from being able to do so. I’ve been able to perform variations of it but nothing as grand.
I’ve even thought that my experiences with “black magic” had run its course and that it was time for me to venture out to other things.
But now, I’ve felt a “pull”. I guess you could say a calling back.
I stumbled on a video that was talking about the “Joy of Satan” website and I downloaded some interesting documents from there. In the process, one of E.A.'s adds for his youtube page popped up in a video I was watching.
I don’t believe in coincidence.
The question form me now is, where do I go from here.
I can’t yet afford any of his books and I’ve been scrapping together what I can from his videos, which only confirm things that I’ve already pieced together from the information that I’ve been gathering since I was first introduced to magic almost 21 years ago.
My wife isn’t really into this kind of stuff but she knows that I am.
She’s not against it though, but I don’t feel comfortable letting her know what I do.
I think this is part of the issue of why I haven’t done anything lately.

sorry. this was pretty lengthy LOL

2

What do you need in your life, career, whatever, that it’s reasonable to apply magick to? That’s as good a way as any to choose what to do next. :slight_smile:

3

What do you need in your life, career, whatever, that it’s reasonable to apply magick to? That’s as good a way as any to choose what to do next. :)[/quote]
The bad part is, I know what needs to be done. For myself/family and the community I live in. The part I’m having a tough time with is actually doing something. I know its just an issues of me getting off my ass and just doing it.

4

What do you need in your life, career, whatever, that it’s reasonable to apply magick to? That’s as good a way as any to choose what to do next. :)[/quote]
The bad part is, I know what needs to be done. For myself/family and the community I live in. The part I’m having a tough time with is actually doing something. I know its just an issues of me getting off my ass and just doing it.[/quote]
well, it’s a bit more than that. but that’s it in a nutshell, when I think about it.

5

Read the book “The Now Habit” - it’s NOT about “just do it now” or stupid sloganeering, it has practical information on why we procrastinate and what to do about it that isn’t “break it down into small steps” and similar kindergarten intelligence-insulting BS.

If there was one book I’d get into everyone’s hands, it’s this one.

6

[quote=“Lady Eva, post:5, topic:6773”]Read the book “The Now Habit” - it’s NOT about “just do it now” or stupid sloganeering, it has practical information on why we procrastinate and what to do about it that isn’t “break it down into small steps” and similar kindergarten intelligence-insulting BS.

If there was one book I’d get into everyone’s hands, it’s this one.[/quote]

Ya. Like I said, there were more factors involved. Exhaustion, making excuses for myself, telling myself “this isn’t right at this time”, “i still need this”, “I have to wait till night”. Crap like that.
But the truth was that I wasn’t going to get anywhere until I did something.
The “just fucking do it!” attitude, most of the time, is the only way I can get things done.
I’m former military and it was the only real way I managed to get through basic training and all the other things I had to do when I was in.
Sometimes, that was the only way I could actually get up in the mornings.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to argue with you or prove you wrong.
I know it doesn’t work for everybody.

7

It’s cool, we’re throwing ideas round and some work for some people, others for different folks. :slight_smile:

You mention that was the only way you could sometimes get up in the morning, and “The Now Habit” is more about finding ways to WANT to leap out of bed, excited about both the “must do” stuff and also the positive reinforcement of the other things you’ve planned, so he basically removes the conflict between “want to do, really” and “must do, but don’t want to” with a few simple ideas.

I found a piece I typed out before, summarising one of the key ideas, this is about why people leave things to the last minute:

Basically, we fear to begin or excel at some tasks, because at some stage we picked up the idea that to do something well means we’ll be stuck doing it forever, that for every hard task we complete, we won’t get suitable recuperation or credit, instead we’ll just be weighed down with more of the same (the educational system reinforces this - to excel at a subject is to be given more, and harder, amounts of the same kind of thing), so we hesitate to start a task, because we think it’s opening the gates of joy-free drudgery.

Giving consent to our own enslavement.

So, we leave things to the last minute so there’s extreme pressure before we act, because then we’re not making the choice to do them, it becomes “do or die.”

The author describes it like, most of us could walk 12 feet along a plank 6 inches wide, if it was flat on the floor.

BUT if that same plank was suspended between two skyscrapers 500 feet in the air, we’d be terrified, and the fear of the height in the example is our (real life) fear of failure, success, and most of all, drudgery. Being trapped.

Going back to the plank, if the building we were stood on top of was on fire, and the flames had reached up to where we stood, we’d HAVE TO cross the plank, nerves or not, and no time to think or worry - that’s his analogy for why we procrastinate and then can suddenly do something when there’s a deadline we can’t break. (I paraphrased it and probably changed some details, but you get the basic idea.)

He also talks about how society has taught us that humans are lazy and need to be goaded, so when we have resistance to an idea, we think that the best way to succeed is to pile on more pain to force ourselves, and why that actually doesn;t work. I highly recommend i, anyway, it opened my eyes to a lot of self-defeating behaviour I was mistaking for the right thing to do.

If you’re ex-military, you might like Stephen Pressfield’s book “The War Of Art” - [url=http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the-war-of-art/]http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the-war-of-art/[/url]

He wrote the excellent “Gates Of Fire,” which you’ve probably heard of. :slight_smile:

8

People have a habit of doing this. I know I’ve done it on several occasions. Start spinning the wheels with all the “what if”'s.
But that’s all you end up doing. Spinning your wheels. Up until (like you said) you get into a do or die situation. Hell, some people won’t even do it then and face the consequence of not doing so.
I’ve done this also. Quite stubbornly.
It becomes a real issue when you keep repeating this and know very well what’s going to happen.
What’s the cause of this kind of behavior? I have no clue.
Maybe it is like you said. We’ve been taught or even conditioned by society to act this way.
But what is society? And who are they to tell us how to act?
Sometimes, I think that subconsciously, we know its unnecessary and total b.s.
Humanity is at a point where everyone of us can branch out and do what we please.
In some regards, we very well can.
People have made it huge on Youtube just by playing video games all day.
Its much easier to get decent work with art and writing. You can even self publish if you know what you’re doing. People are even developing their own video games.
We live in fascinating times.

But then why are there people that are still self defeating?
I don’t know.

I think it goes back to the whole “mind over matter” subject.
Don’t think to much about something. If you do, you start wearing yourself down and stressing about things that may not even be a factor in the first place.
The only limits you have are the ones you put on yourself.
We are beings who have no limitations at all and we live in a reality that we can shape and mold as we see fit.
Yes, we have obstacles along the way and barriers we have to get through, but that’s part of the human experience. getting past those barriers and obstacles is how we learn.
We all don’t have the same obstacles to deal with. Some have more than others, some have harder than others, and some have obstacles that test your very limits of sanity to the point that you wonder how you even survived to begin with.
Half the time, its a total test of mental fortitude.
I’ve seen it destroy people. I’ve also seen people completely rise above it and become far better people in the end.
Take EA’s story. Now that’s a guy who’s been through some shit. Look at him now.
He’s publishing books, giving talks and has a huge following. Hell, he’s held audience with the Golden Dawn.
Granted, he’s far from finished and he’s still got a ton he’s got to go through.
I saw a post on here where someone asked why EA isn’t successful, based off of the analytics they saw on youtube. That’s because Youtube is just an outlet to reach out to people. He doesn’t necessarily need it. He’s already well on his way to success.

Not sure if I lost topic here.
I kinda just got to this point that things just kept flowing.
Sorry LOL.

9

[quote=“dranos, post:8, topic:6773”]What’s the cause of this kind of behavior? I have no clue.
Maybe it is like you said. We’ve been taught or even conditioned by society to act this way.[/quote]

I wasn’t going to reply to this but this needs clarifying - nowhere did I say society conditions us to procrastinate, society expects us all to be busy worker-bees paying taxes and keeping our heads down: I explained what I think (inspired by the book The Now Habit but it agrees with my own insight into when I;ve done stuff like this myself).

Just clearing that up. :slight_smile:

10

I must have misread the sentence.
I apologize.

11

Eh, no probs - you realise asking for help in motivation is like, basically, saying Candyman 3 times in front of a mirror or whatever - you just unleashed Satan’s most manic cheerleader on your ass, so I’m going to basically hound you, like the dogs of hell, like the Furies, until you CHEER UP and GET MOTIVATED and DO SOME FUCKING MAGICK! :smiley:

Okay, kidding about a bit there, but I do take quite seriously the right, ability, and responsibility of every mage to control her or his mental state, mood, and not just leave things to whim, “don’t feel like it” etc.

This is because I have battled the fuck out of clinical depression, where I couldn’t even wash my hair for like 8 months one time, so I know a thing or two about getting on with magick.

IMO, your goals are just not inspiring enough, and/or your pain is not dissonant enough with your sense of who you are.

Dissonant? Let me explain: some people would die of shame if they had to rent a single room, for example, or be on disability, or work in shitty jobs, while other people obviously can do these things and stay sane, even be happy and powerful, and lead fulfilling lives - this is because the dissonance (disharmony etc.) with “who I am” and that station in life would destroy their psyche, their pride, their ego.

There’s N.O.T.H.I.N.G wrong with having a healthy, even greedy, ego, that wants the best for you, and isn’t comfortable with less, so please don’t take this as some RHP lecture on “humility” or anything!

My Point is that you’re too comfortable where you are on some deep level, it matches with your deeply-seated values about stuff, and evidently, getting yourself a better life or whatever is deeply uninspiring.

I suggest you lookup my hero David Neagle on that, I can give you some links if you want, but dont want to swamp you…

But to be honest, where you are right now seems to be where you most WANT to be, so anything we chuck at you will be like water off a duck’s back. :wink:

12

LOL its fine. sometimes, that’s exactly what it takes :slight_smile:
But just to let you know, I did do something shortly after i wrote the initial post :slight_smile:
It has put my mind back where it needs to be for this stuff and has helped me realize why my workings haven’t been as effective as i would like them to be.
I’m anxious to get to experimenting.

Depression is a horrible thing to deal with. It is the one thing that can totally immobilize you and put you in a pit that you think you can never get out of.

Maybe its not that its not inspiring enough. maybe I’m just approaching them in the wrong way.

Go ahead and post the links. Wouldn’t hurt to check them out :slight_smile:

I AM in the best place I have ever been and I love it. Interesting how you got that just from what I’ve written here :wink:
It can be better though.
As the situation stands right now, my wife is the major bread winner here. I work as a freelance artist. though it does bring in a decent amount, it doesn’t bring it in as regularly as I would like it to. This causes a lot of worry and a lot of unnecessary stress on her shoulders.
This is something that I would like to change most.
Your words aren’t rolling off my back. I’m taking in all of what you say and the majority of what I’ve been reading on this forum :slight_smile:

13

Cool - here’s part 1 of his Art Of Success stuff in audio form, he talks about values clashes in this: https://davidneagle.com/art-of-success-business-school-lesson-1-the-perpetual-search/

If you like that, the full program is linked here: https://davidneagle.com/category/business-school/feed/

More of David talking about how value conflicts can mess us up via “not being ready” and procrastination here (4m 20s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik8aRj5wSDA

I highly recommend ALL his videos on YouTube, he talks about sales and business but the underlying stuff he talks about it true in every aspect of life… I love that guy! :slight_smile:

An example of a value clash would be someone who desperately wants to make more money, but their values underneath that are things like, “Rich people are selfish and greedy, rich people are bad, rich people are at fault for many of the world’s problems” - so the person has a value system around the nobolity of poverty, the sheer “wrongness” of being rich, while also desperately wanting to make more money.

It’s incredibly common, most of us receive jumbled messages when we’re growing up that have been handed down through our familes and our strata of society, whether working class, middle-class, whatever, and we attach shame towards certain groups we resent, fear, or distrust - in 99% of cases, right from the hard-work revering, politically conservative types, through all the middle ground over to the red-flag waving commie, the most resented will be the rich and the powerful - maybe with a side-helping of scorn for people they think are getting something for nothing.

And most people, across the political spectrum, are neither rich - nor powerful - and also, most are pretty damned unlucky, because their “something for nothing is BAD” value kicks in, every time they read about a welfare recipient, lottery winner, or a rich heiress…

Go figure!

To break out from that we MUST understand these values clashes, and resolve them - I had one regarding power when I was younger, because everyone was busily affirming that “power corrupts” and so on.

I had to get to a place where I believed it’s not power that corrupts, but people’s unthinking obedience to authority (and a bunch of other things) and also do things like a massive “moral inventory” where I sat down and worked out every single thing I’d done that made me feel bad about myself, make amends in some way where possible, and in some cases, I realised I had been accusing myself based on a false, emotion-based analysis of the situation and my role in it.

I did that to get a reading on what my true values are now, not only as an adult, but also someone who plans to acquire large amounts of occult power (literally occult - I’m not running for office or anything).

Most people will never do this and end up stuck believing one thing deep down, like success, power, money are bad (doubly so if they were raised to believe it’s better to work hard, and be poor, than lead a life of leisure and recreation as a very rich person) whilst superfically wanting, even needing, these things themselves - and getting nowhere.

14

Thank you :slight_smile: I will definitely check these out when i have a moment to :slight_smile:

Understandable. This self defeating attitude does seem counterproductive. If you want to benefit from a system, you’re going to have adhere to it in some way and “play by their rules”. Immoral or not, these people have attained what you’re trying to achieve. They’re the ones you want to look to.

The way i see it, they are where they are, and I am where I am. There’s been a series of circumstance or events that has put them there, as the same for me. It doesn’t do any good to harbor jealousy towards them. They’re going through their own experience.
But when they start being a dick for no damn reason at all, that’s when i take issue. rich or poor. There is no dividing line in human decency.

That “something for nothing is bad” attitude tends to get irritating for me. Maybe they’ve had it coming to them for some time. Maybe at some point, they in fact did do something to get that money, or maybe even, its blind luck. We don’t know. Again, we’re going through our own experiences and that’s all we really know.

I know what you mean. For sometime, I’ve been tossing around in my head that adage of “power corrupts” because it just never sounded right to me. It’s like that saying “knowledge is power”. No. Its not that knowledge is power. It’s the USE of knowledge that’s power.
You can be the most knowledgeable person on the face of the Earth, but it wouldn’t mean a damn thing if you didn’t use it.
But you also have to know WHEN to use it.
When I was younger, I would only entertain the idea of using a curse if

  1. I was angry beyond all other reasoning and felt totally justified in doing so and 2. there was absolutely no other way.
    I would spend some time evaluating the situation and events. A good part of the time, I found that I was just being hot headed.
    Other times, I would take it for granted and think I was over reacting but in truth, I was mad as hell and just pushing it down. This resulted in the occasional period of intense thoughts of anger and even extreme hatred towards someone for something they did. Sometime after these periods, I would hear about that person suddenly having the worst things happen to them.
    And shortly after I got over my anger, and I guess you could say, forgave them, their loves turned around leaving me with the question, did I do this?
    On some level, I think I very much did.
    I understand that you weren’t talking about this. This was just a little interjection of random thought.

I had to get to a place where I believed it’s not power that corrupts, but people’s unthinking obedience to authority (and a bunch of other things) and also do things like a massive “moral inventory” where I sat down and worked out every single thing I’d done that made me feel bad about myself, make amends in some way where possible, and in some cases, I realized I had been accusing myself based on a false, emotion-based analysis of the situation and my role in it.

I’ve done these self evaluations also. Except mine have been “what did I do wrong and what could I have done to make it better?” but this leads into a “I should have done this” situation and we all know that is no good because then you end up beating yourself to death with the what if’s.
I need to try what you’ve done. Explore more of the “Why do I feel this way”. Because I shouldn’t feel bad about what I’ve done. What I did is What I did. There’s no way of changing it and if I did things differently, I wouldn’t be where I am now and would probably be in a horrible situation.

LOL
This is what I’m striving for too (as I’m positive that the majority of the people on this site are also.)
I worry that I’ve lost a lot of time with all the dilly dallying that I’ve been doing but everything happens for a reason.

15

Also, most criminals are poor (or at least not rich), I mean petty criminals who mug grannies, steal car stereos and stuff, inflicting misery on their own level of society, and yet THAT is never brought up to “prove” that poverty is immoral…

I've done these self evaluations also. Except mine have been "what did I do wrong and what could I have done to make it better?" but this leads into a "I should have done this" situation and we all know that is no good because then you end up beating yourself to death with the what if's. I need to try what you've done.

When I did mine, I headed up a Word document with the title “Things where I’ve been out of integrity” - that’s one of those personal-development phrases that CAN sound a bit tacky, but I honestly felt it was this I needed to address - times when I felt my own integrity had been compromised by me doing something where I could/should have known, or acted, in a better way.

Then I did a huge brain dump of everything I felt bad about, firstly without any judgement or attempt to rank things.

Then I went back through, this was over a few days but mainly done on one day, looking at:

  1. was the act REALLY out of integrity with my core values, or was I using external morality I don’t genuinely believe in to judge myself? Some of these were things I did before I was even out of my 20’s, and looking back with a more mature mind helped me see the situations differently.

  2. what, simply put, would a person I respect have done in those situations? And was it reasonable to continue to judge and condemn myself, as I was at the time, against those standards? Usually the answer was no.

  3. outright fails - I’m human, I had a few times where no matter what, I realised I’d just done something I wasn’t proud of, for no valid reasons, and I set out to correct as many of these as possible, made some donations to charity etc (that I made sure were large enough to be noticeable to me, a genuine sacrifice).

Obviously I shredded the hell out the document and have reformatted that particular HDD a few times anyway, since… but after doing it, after actioning all the stuff under 3. and looking at the entire list of things, from small to large, that had been weighing me down, damn did I feel better! CLEAN.

I prefer, right now, to have positive “values” (such as being a decent person, kindness, courtesy, and so on) to negative “moral laws” which are mainly about what you can’t do, that seems to fit better with my experience - that to aspire towards something desirable is better than trying to ban something negative or unwanted.

Obviously I’m no philosopher so take that fwiw, but it comes from learning about beating an addiction, where (as someone wrote on here recently) you don’t simply “stop drinking/using/whatever” - because that leaves you with a gaping void the activity was trying to fill in the first place - you HAVE to replace it with something positive, whether it’s a hobby, exercise, a new lifestyle, a new way to unwind, whatever.

Anyway that’s a bit off-topic, but that was how I did my big inventory, I’ve run minor ones since but nothing really as major because I didn’t have an (up 'til then) lifetime of stuff to sort out, and I’m very glad I did it, it seemed like the moment at which I was taking proper responsibility in a LHP-oriented way, instead of dragging round a grab-bag of other people’s phony moralities and whatever. :slight_smile:

16

Sorry for taking so long to reply back on this. I’ve been taking time to mull over what you’ve been saying and listening to those audio recordings.
I have to say that it has allowed me to analyze things, narrow them down and start figuring out the problems. Also I’ve been picking up some other useful things in the process

17

So far, from what I’ve pieced together, one of my big problems is unwilling to take major risks. When ever I set out for a project, I always play it safe and don’t take any gambles. This is in art and most things in general.
That’s not the way to go. You don’t learn anything that way.
Another thing I have stuck in my head is when an opportunity arises, I always think that I’m not ready but, like David says, if you weren’t ready, the opportunity wouldn’t be there.
Also there’s a factor that I don’t put myself out there and “sale” my art.
I don’t like to admit it but I AM afraid of rejection. But as I have heard many professional artists say, that’s just part of the game. You’re going to get more rejections than acceptions.
Of course, this boils back down to not willing to take gambles and also applies to magic.

18

Yeah, usually if we have a problem or blockage in doing one kind of thing, it extends to others including magick, there are exceptions but if there are other areas where you want results but don’t seem able to do the heavy lifting, the causes will ultimately be the same.

I love David because he points a laser at everything like that, and that then gives you the ability to fix it.

19

It only makes sense. Since we are amazingly complex beings, the smallest issue can send everything out of whack.

He does. But he doesn’t just outright give you the answer. He makes you think about it. I think this is better in the long run because you end up discovering more than you initially thought, in the process.
Something tells me that there is a lot more to him though than what he gives off in his presentations. Even with his references to god, there’s still his subtle hints that he knows more.
More layers to the onion as with any other fascinating person.

20

I get that feeling as well, and I’m so glad you’ve clicked with his stuff - I go on about him so much on here, people must think I’m some kinda stalkerfan, and yeah I will admit those gorgeous Tony Curtis eyes don’t do any harm :slight_smile: but I just think he’s one of THE most profound teachers and speakers in the mainstream world right now.

I was talking to a friend who knows someone who coached with him 1-2-1 and apparently he delivers every bit as much as you’d expect, my friend’s friend totally turned her business around as a result, so that’s pretty cool!