My beginnings in the occult

So, I am back from a month long vacation that took quite a revealing turn as I recalled something from my childhood.

I am 28 now and I actively practice for 6 years but as it turned out, I was an occultist long before that. First of all, I got signed up to karate classes when I was 6 years old and a very basic form of meditation was part of the curriculum. Later when I was about 10 I bought a book about Ninjutsu (ninja movies were big at the time). The book was namely about history and dictionary but there was also a big section regarding meditation and kuji-in (hand gestures). Different effects were associated with different gestures and I will take a look at this later.

When I was about 12 I tried a silver magick ritual (sort of fluff dark magick but hey, I was 12), the ritual consisted of using 5 names: Astaroth, Dragonis, Moloch, Empusa, Nosferatu, shortly ADMEN (I remember it even now), when I was 15 I read A. S. LaVey's Satanic Bible which by the coincidence was the book that also refreshed this memory. After creating my occult FB account and getting invited to countless LHP and Satanism groups I got interested to refresh my memory on LaVey's satanism so I bought the book and read it again. The vibe of the book was the same as the vibe of Thelema which explains why Thelema felt so natural to me, I knew some of it from before.

My childhood
I've had some weird experiences before even attending school. For one instance I remember an experience during which I tripped and fell face first into a fresh concrete, my father wasn't really happy about this and I got beaten up for it. The problem here is that this didn't happen to me, but to my 6 years older brother, yet I still have this vivid memory seeing everything from the first person as if this happened to me.

For another one I recalled seeing myself from the third point of view on a couple of occasions, this happened to me especially during practicing karate katas. In other words I had seen myself externally while moving.

It happened to me at least twice that a time slowed down around me, both instances were during a jump which felt unnaturally long because of this. Something similar also happened to me during a fight in school when the time stopped fully while my "opponent" was caught mid-air. I remember thinking about how to use this to my advantage and where to stand so after "the time runs again" it will look impressive. During this maneuvering around I noticed my body still stands on the same place and while I tried to get into it so I can moved with it, the time started again and I got kicked to the chest :D.

Adult years
I became interested in hypnosis when I was about 17 and read a lot of things about it in the public library. I usually sneak into the section I didn't have access into and read there. When I was caught I said I forgot the registration card at home and will come with it the next day. I obviously didn't have the card so I never did. Btw this way I also learned programming which is what I do for a living now :).

In the time I was recently employed I got prosecuted for fare evasion in the city I never even visited. Someone somehow got my ID details and used it to identify himself during the ticket inspection. Problem was that I didn't have any alibi for that time as it was when I still visited the university and the university can hardly prove when someone is or isn't in the class, especially that way back. The events weren't in my favor so while waiting outside the courtroom I have used the jin kuji-in (described in the book I had as: for telepathy and the universe manipulation) to manipulate the court decision in my favor. Luckily I won that case and didn't have to pay any penalty or the court bill (in my country the defeated side pays for the court). But what is interesting I had this emergency "magical thinking" I would fall into if required to manipulate things I normally couldn't, and this was before I started being officially interested in the occult practice.

Few observations
I didn't only have weird experiences as a child. It seems that the universe didn't miss any opportunity to send some interesting pieces of information my way. Thinking back it doesn't look like it was my free choice to start with the occult, it more seems like I was meant to and the occult was dragging me in quite strongly. The question is why. Was I born with this kind of a plan for me or did it develop because of my early meditation practice? Like if you open the door will you then always be attracted to the light behind it?

ZENER cards experiment

During the weekend I have made a series of experiments with my wife using ZENER cards (cross, square, circle, waves, star).

In this experiment I would shuffle the cards and then project one on the top to my wife. My wife had a 100% success rate receiving and calling out the correct card.

The interesting thing I have noticed in case of ZENER cards is the ease to keep each individual card in the plastic visualization. Hard to say whether this is caused by the superb design or the fact that these cards are used strictly for this type of use and got some egregores built for them.

Anyway the use is really simple.  For the selected card I have visualized a plastic image I held at the center of my wife's third chakra (sometimes also slightly above on the forehead). As I already said, it was fairly easy to keep the visualization strong and effects were amazing. I really recommend experimentation with ZENER cards.

Interesting telepathy suggestion

So, yesterday on my way home I had a very sore throat so when I was about 5 minutes from home I have sent a suggestion to my wife to make a drink by mixing water and a form of a fruit syrup (usual drink in my country) and to bring it to the garage (we usually meet in the garage and have a cup of coffee before going home, the reason is that we don't smoke in the house).

So I came home and a glass of a "pre-ordered" beverage was there waiting for me, plus another glass of 7UP. So I have asked my wife about that and found out that about 5 minutes ago she thought I would need a drink and went upstairs to make one, completely forgetting there was already 7UP in the garage.

About objectivity, reality and dogma in Magick

Well, this is going to be one of those weird articles about dogma I am used to write on a regular basis, but stay with me, ok? :-)

About truth
I think the truth is what we all seek, digging deep into the core of mystery, avoiding the sharp edges of disinformation, fighting the shark of dogmatism with our harpoon of logic to finally find that treasure chest on the bottom of the ocean (too much analogy?). I think this is an important topic everywhere, after all none of us wants to get stuck in a malfunctioning system full of weird beliefs, silly practices and brainwashed hierarchy. We want to avoid all that and get to the sweet bottom where the chest is hidden.

Few years ago I was arguing with psions about existence/non-existence of chakras. They claimed chakras don't exist and I claimed they bloody do. My argument was that I had already seen them, their claim was that you cannot see a chakra of a person that was never in contact with some "guru" teaching about chakras and therefore they are just invented constructs rather than natural occurence of the energy body.

Reality versus experience
Sure I was dogmatic regarding chakras at the time (same as they were dogmatic of their non-existence, duh), but I was also dogmatic much later with my "avoid dogma at all costs" approach. Dogmatic system still has some useful value to it which you wouldn't experience without going through the dogma, which I think is the main point of Chaos Magick and its paradigm shift. To really become the monk, to really become the shaman, to really become the trickster. Only through experience you can move forward.

Let's now check our chakra story. Question shouldn't be whether chakras are real or not. The question should be more like "Can I miss something by avoiding them?" The answer might not be so obvious i case of chakras, but what about elements? Do we really want to miss the experience just because we don't believe everything in this universe consists of 4 primary substances that came from the fifth primordial substance? Same goes for spirits and same also goes for travelling. Whether you believe or not believe in Astral shouldn't block you from Astral projection, because the whole experience of the projection is so beautiful and scary that you really don't want to miss it :-). The whole idea of separating your subtle self from a material body and travel on its own is more than just scary, especially during the first separation, as it equals to the blind jump into the abyss, an unknown place where anything can happen and you don't even know if you can breathe there or protect yourself (or return back, that's usually the major concern during the separation). Yet once you are there you find yourself speechless with the beauty. That's definitely not something to miss because of the dogma "to avoid all dogmas".

Pendulum experiment

So, I have executed a series of experiments to find out how pendulums actually work. Some of these experiments were run by me together with my wife, some were run by the former apprentice of mine and some by an old friend of mine.

Experiment #1
In this instance it was needed to check the accuracy of the pendulum itself, so a random 2 cards (one red and one black) were selected. These cards were shuffled and put face down on the table without anyone knowing which card was which. The process was to use the pendulum find the red card. This experiment was within the scope of statistical error.

Experiment #2
In this experiment the person shuffling cards took a peak at the cards before placing them face down on the table, this way the scryer didn't know which cards was which, but there was at least one person who knew. Thanks to this the scrying became accurate (about 80% success rate).

Experiment #3
This one was done together with my former apprentice. Cards were laid face down as before, but instead of using the pendulum, a simple "guessing" was utilized. Results were very similar to those in two previous experiments, that means when there was someone in the room knowing which card is which, the success rate raised dramatically.

Experiment #4
Experiment number 4 was done together with my apprentice. In this case a pendulum was used to showcase the chakra on the hand and its natural spin. My former apprentice had a completely different result as when he was holding the pendulum, it wasn't showing this chakra at all, instead a very strong repulsion or attraction (depending on which hand was being diagnosed) was shown, clearly representing the magnetic and electromagnetic forces of a receiving and transmitting hand.

Experiment #5
Like experiment #4, but with a friend of mine. This time a chakra was shown no matter which one of us did the scrying. More importantly, while I was diagnosing the hands of my friend, he got an idea to flip his hands over. This made the pendulum to go immediatelly in the other direction, thus proving the chakras really are spinning wheels. We have then checked different angles and distances. And this thesis was proven even further.

Conclusion
It is more or less publicly known for a long time that a pendulum is actually operated by the ideo-motoric movement instead of some invisible force and by these experiments it was actually proven.

In a nutshell it means that the pendulum is only as good as its operator. If you notice in our experiments, it was very hard to e.g. select the correct card when no one knew its location and it became fairly easy once someone knew where the card is. This is because telepathy is actually more natural and readily available ability than finding a card that is nearly indistinguishable from the other one on the astral level. Experimentation without the pendulum also further proves this because results with and without the pendulum were nearly the same, showing that pendulums are just tools instead of power objects on its own and what counts in the end is the ability of the scryer.

In case of the chakra diagnosis it was also apparent because my former apprentice was unable to focus on chakras with his analytical and cold-logic mind, instead being shown a very strong effect of attraction and repulsion of the pendulum by his hands. On the other hand, a friend of mind who is able to focus on chakras, had pretty much the same results as I did.

This stuff happens

There is some event from yesterday I should mention. When I was returning from the car service there was a part where I forgot myself and instead of driving the usual 90 kmph (which is a speed limit) I went 20 kmph less. In the turn I have met a truck that was trying to overtake the tractor, effectively blocking my part of the road. If I were going the usual speed, I would surely be dead by now as my BMW isn't truck crash resistant :D.
So yeah, stuff like this happens when you are practicing Magick.