On Becomings
How do we learn to be magicians? Do we just pick up a book or two, do the exercises and rituals, and take on the beliefs and perspectives that ‘feel right’ to us? Maybe do an online course with a teacher whom we have come to respect? Go on social media and engage constructively (or not) with other practitioners. Join a small group or a large magical organization? It is not, I feel, a simple process. Well at least, it was not a simple process for me. I was not initiated by fairies at the bottom of the garden, as one of my friends says he was. I did not have a magical granny or the memory of a past life being a high magus in Atlantis. I did not receive messages from a spiritual master on the Inner Planes. I did not experience a sudden spiritual awakening or a summons by a goddess.
The more I reflect on my beginnings in magic I realize it was a very slow process. I became interested in the occult in my late teens. I read a lot of books, mostly in the local public library. It was not until I moved away from home (in 1978) to pursue a degree that I met up with other people who either were interested in magic or practitioners themselves. There was an older guy on the course who’d been in a magical order. He’d lost interest in the occult for the most part but introduced me to his older sister, who was not only still in the order but doing anthropology research into UFO groups. She had corresponded with Kenneth Grant! I was seriously impressed.
I found, much to my delight, that there was a thriving magical subculture; that there were lectures and meetings I could go to; that there were specialized bookshops run by magical practitioners. There were magazines written by and for practitioners. It was amazing – a whole world of wonder opened up.
I joined a lodge of the Theosophical Society. I did a postal correspondence course in Ceremonial Magic run by a magical order (they promised suitable candidates would be offered initiation). I went to Pagan Moots. I read anything I could get my hands on: Regardie’s The Golden Dawn, David Conway’s Magic: An Occult Primer. Magick in Theory and Practice. Kenneth Grant’s first books (one of them found in the bargain bin at a retail chain store). I also found strange little small press books such as Ray Sherwin’s The Book of Results and Peter J Carroll’s Liber Null. I gradually began to become aware that there were differences between the various approaches to magic. The person mentoring my correspondence course replies ticked me off for spelling magic with a “k”. This was a Thelema thing, and the magical order who put the course out were not Thelemites! This person also told me off for trying out sigil magic, saying that it was dangerous and I should not be doing it. I didn’t take that on board. Making no distinction between fiction and non-fiction, and by the availability of several different versions of the Necronomicon by 1981 I’d already tried my hand at experimenting magically with Lovecraftian entities such as Yog-Sothoth and Great Cthulhu (more about that in this post). I spent many an evening with magic-interested friends who, like myself, had not ventured very far in actual practice, debating theories and ideas.
Of course, other things were going on too. I was studying a wide range of disciplines – Sociology, Social Policy, Psychology (everything from experimental methodology to psychodynamic theory); Philosophy, and Statistics. I was learning to write essays. One of my first pieces of ‘creative’ writing was a comparison of Austin Osman Spare and William Blake (the lecturer wasn’t impressed). I was having formative experiences with sex, drugs, and politics. I visited a student union bar in drag one night. I was at a gay club that was raided by the police. I met feminist activists and anarchists. I became heavily involved with the local Fantasy Role-Playing scene. I had my first contact with large computers and learned how they could be programmed (punch cards, back then). I went to parties, went on long drinking benders, and began to deal, tentatively, with my introversion and crippling sense of self-doubt. I went to a meeting of the Moonies and was love-bombed. I came out to my parents, who were not supportive in the least. I had an overdraft and had to go to the bank every week to plead my case for an allowance just to live. As a third-year student, I taught the basics of Jungian thought to first-years. My graduating thesis was on Fantasy Role-Playing Games and Late-Stage Capitalist market proliferation.
I started writing too. My first ever piece of ‘magical’ writing was “Green Magic”, submitted to and accepted by Wood and Water, a pagan zine. It wasn’t very original – mostly recycled ideas from books, but it was a start.
Those three years were intense in many ways. But looking back on them I don’t think I had a sense of direction. I did not have a sense of what I wanted to do with my life, either in terms of a career or in terms of magic. I was, I now feel, wide open to possibilities, but hadn’t spent much time in situating myself within them. I had thought of pursuing a career in academia but was put off by one of my friends saying he hadn’t read a novel in three years while doing his Ph.D. That didn’t sound like much fun. I’d stopped going to Theosophical Society meetings by this time. The magical order that I did the correspondence course with did not extend an invitation to me to become a neophyte of their order. I guess I was not what they thought constituted a ‘suitable candidate’.
What now seems strange to me is that although I’d been taught some elements of critical thinking (how to look for flaws in experimental design for example) I never thought to apply this to magic. Perhaps I was having too much fun. A lot of what I encountered, when it came to the occult material, I just accepted or ignored – either way, not thinking about it much (see this post for more on that point).
By 1981, with the conclusion of my degree studies (I achieved a 2:1 grade, and there was a bit of a kerfuffle over possible plagiarism – but the investigation found that it was another student who’d plagiarized some of my work rather than me ripping off them) I left the bright lights of Huddersfield and returned to my home town. A chance encounter there led me to be initiated into a Wiccan coven. I wasn’t particularly interested in or attracted to Wicca – but that coven was ‘the only game in town’.
Why am I writing this? Is this merely yet more self-indulgent anecdotting? Well, perhaps. But this kind of self-reflexivity is a core part of my magical process. It didn’t come easily to me; it is a skill I have developed over time. Reflexivity has taken off since the beginning of the new century. It is now widely used across different research disciplines. It is a core element now in the training of teachers and medical professionals. It is taught in schools. It is a skill worth developing, and I will be writing more about its application in terms of magical practice in due course.
Also, and perhaps more importantly, I feel it can be beneficial for those of us who are just beginning our journies into the wondrous world of magic to know that others have struggled too, and perhaps continue to do so on occasion. That if you feel you lack direction or purpose; if you haven’t settled on one path or another, this is not unusual – it might even be many people’s experience. Perhaps those of us who write or make videos about magic need to pay more attention to this feature of the life magical.
