Getting Started in Magic

Once a fairy tried to zap me with her wand. Seriously. True story. Fortunately for me a more powerful fairy, maybe her boss, made her back off. Sounds like a good reason to learn magic to me! Okay it was a dream. But if you know me you know that my dreams are more than just “dreams.”

If you have been thinking about starting a magic practice for more than 10 seconds you are probably already dazed and confused. There’s lots of advice floating around and plenty of disagreement. So how DO you get started? Before you get zapped!

Why Learn Magic?

Humans are hardwired to engage in changing the world with magic for their survival. What has been true for millennia and still is true is people have been and continue to practice magic. Magic has survived political and religious oppression. Yet, you can find magic worldwide in every culture, as far as I know.

People do magic for various reasons.  There are very down to earth practices. Planting by the moon for example. Astrology has been popular for ages. Cursing, spells, prayer, and on and on. The drive to evolve spiritually is also strong. Mastering ourselves as we grow and develop in and beyond the 3d of physical life.

Understanding why you want to study magic can help you  decide how to get started. Do you want to focus on magic for your career or relationships? Are you fascinated with astrology and want to go deeper? There is a whole area of study specializing in astrological magic. Consider why you want to study magic because having a clear reason can help you initially in finding the trailhead for you magic path.

My Journey

My start in magic happened when I was pretty young. Around age 9 I was pretty much destined to be traveling the magical path for life. Granted I needed another 4 decades or so to fully embrace the path. Why I started this journey? I don’t really know. My guess is I was already involved in magic in a prior incarnation.

Essentially, in this life anyway I had no guidance early on. Certainly, no flesh and blood guidance. My intuition and a handful of books by Carlos Castaneda were my guides during my younger years. In fact, the idea of magic didn’t really occur to me until much later in life.

I was framing my experiences in terms of mind power, esp, psychic powers, meditation, and such. Over time I started to clue into working with energy. Eventually, I found my way to building relationships with gods and goddesses.

Finally, after the long road of doing my own thing I am studying Druidry in a structured and systematic manner. Everyday I meditate, practice divination, and banish icky energy.

What about religion? Instead of having a particular cultural or religious foundation nature was my foundation if anything and she doesn’t have many rules. I have learned though that had I been a member of a religion there was almost certainly a magical tradition I could have followed.

Choices for Magical Training

Getting started learning to do magic means making a choice. The basic choice is do you want to go with structure or not. You decisions get more detailed as you go.

Where do you put that first footprint on the path? Don’t let the first step overwhelm you. Changing your mind is always allowed. Whatever choices you make just give them some time and honest effort. Six months or so is good. Unless things just feel really ooky and slimy. Get out fast if the energy is bad.

Remember no mater what path you take you will need to invest time and energy. Magic is a skill and like any other skill does take practice.

The Intuitive Path

A completely intuitive approach has a key advantage. You won’t get distracted by an agenda you aren’t interested in following. Yes, there can be lots of politics in magic. Humans are involved.

Being unstructured though lets you focus all your efforts in whatever draws your attention. Which can become a problem. If you don’t have any guidance you may miss out on training that would fill in gaps and introduce you to ideas you had thought of yet.

Structured Magic Training

Regardless of whether you are already involved in a religious organization or not there is a structured path and an unstructured one.

The advantage of structure is you won’t miss important areas of training assuming a credible program. Finding a good training program takes some time but is worth taking your time to do. Reading online blogs and forums can give you some good insights.

Magic Foundations

Whether you go intuitive and free form or with more structure and guidance there are three legs of magic which can help you a lot. No doubt there are plenty of people who say there is no need for one or more of these. All I have to say is these have helped me a lot to do every singe day. It only took too many decades to stop being so dang independent and give them a try.

Banishing

A short look at any social media platform will show just how much gunk there is floating around in the world. All that energy is impacting us on various levels of being. Emotions, etheris, dreams, physical, and even attracting entities which may not have your best interest at heart.

My Druidry coursework has me doing a sphere of protection daily. Yes, it is helping tidy things up around me.

Meditation

Your mind and imagination or key tools in your magic development and effectiveness. Being able to focus mentally is a powerful skill. One of the best ways to develop your focus is with meditation.

While I have been meditating for years I was only getting so so benefit. Maybe even some negative results. I had been doing empty mind meditation without much to balance the empty aspect.

For about three months I have been doing discursive meditation. With discursive meditation you focus on a theme using imagery, questions, and observation of insights. When distractions show up you bring yourself back to the theme. Discursive meditation has been around for a long, long time. Somehow I didn’t get the memo.

Within a few weeks I was seeing big results. Better focus and less reactivity for starters. Sleeping better, too.

Divination

The third leg of a basic magic practice is divination. Good practice for your intuition and imagination, getting daily guidance on how your day is going to go can be quite helpful. Write it all down so you can see how your skills at doing readings are developing.

How long will you need to practice the foundations? If you are breathing the practice will be of benefit. Keep going there is a lot to explore in the depths you can dive as a physical human. If you’ve seen it all you probably wouldn’t be incarnating in the physical anymore.

Conclusion

Getting started learning magic can be very confusing. These days we can pick from an abundance of books, blogs, forums, seminars, courses, and newsletters for our training. Where to start can be overwhelming. Knowing why you  want to learn magic is a very helpful first step. After the “why” being willing to experiment and listen to your intuition will help you find the next step in your path. A little divination wouldn’t hurt either.