Personal Exp. VS Books

[Coffee_and_Burberry]

This is my first thread on here. I'll start with an introductory...

I became interested in the occult at a young age due to experiencing things I could not explain, and vivid lucid dreaming. Often remembering as many as 5 in a night without any training to do so. As I got older I realized some I thought were dreams were actually OBE's. I came to learn this reading other peoples experiences with astral travel. When I found myself relating to some (of course many others sounded like horse shit and were obviously for attention) I just thought it was strange but didn't really have any feelings about it.

From child age till now something I consider to be very dumb happens to me quite often lol. I used to think I was crazy and just literally could not understand why it was happening or even what was happening. As soon as I'd get comfortable somewhere (in my bed, on the couch, in a chair, laying on the floor with my cat, etc.), I'd hear muffled voices that sound far away, sometimes right next to my head. I've heard children, men, women, a group of men and women. I once heard a little girl say "jumping in the mud" and that's all I got. They say the most random stupid stuff and it never makes any sense. My conclusion : Dead people are dumb and annoying. Some could be astral travelers, I have no idea. And kind of don't really care. No fascination with it. I would honestly prefer if it didn't happen at all.

Now here's where my interest peeked. I was psychically attacked by something, one time was extremely blatant, the times surrounding that time I would imagine it was still happening but it was pretty nuts. I like some good solid personal experience, like in my face shit.

I had been feeling very drained and was emotionally weak at the time. I'd gone through a bad break up with a man I was with for 4yrs. it was not pretty by any means. I equated my being sad and in mourning over my lost time for the drained feeling and wanting to sleep all the time. (I always try to dismiss things as something logical and within the here and now) Out of nowhere one day, in the middle of day, I became very very tired. Like if I didn't make it to the bed I was going to pass out on the floor. I keep my cell with me next to my pillow and I checked the time before I passed out. I was gone within less than a second and started dreaming immediately. (This is going to seem very silly, and just know I'm not afraid of clowns.Going to to try to make this as short as possible.) In my dream I was opening boxes of things I'd ordered in the mail, perfumes and such, in my bedroom. The light was on. Somehow it turned off, I'd walk over and flip it back on. This happened about 3 times in the dream. The next it happened I was pissed and just yelled "whatever the fuck is doing that, stop." I went to put the perfumes on my vanity and when I did, the closet doors flung open and from inside of it came this weird ass clown. All I knew was I felt like "this is not a person, and this is REAL. this THING is real." It started lumbering towards me, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of what can only be described as "dread/I'm going to die". I bolted for the door and it wouldn't open, I started panicking because that never happened to me in a dream before. I didn't feel in control and it was fucked up. It's face was an inch away from mine, I gasped.

Woke up, flinging myself out of bed, my heart going a million miles a minute. I checked my phone. I was asleep for 15minutes...
After that I felt watched. And my bed was shaken one day, 3 times.

I've read tons of books. I've conjured and practiced. I've had excellent results. But I personally believe, what you naturally are, and the things you draw in are more than anything you can do from a book. And to some degree I believe people let books tell them how it is and not their own experience. There is a law and there isn't. However you, your composite is part of that law. Don't think because a man wrote it down and had it published that it is the only way. I am in favor of learning without books, and using better judgement to make proper coorilations. Personally, I think when people do it "by the book" it lacks power, emotion, and the driving force that is even behind 'magick'.

[the_spiral]

I think both have their place. If you keep your head in the books all the time you risk armchair magician syndrome—people who can intellectually explain magic but can't feel it on an intuitive level and thus never experience any concrete benefits from their dabbling (besides the shallow ego rush of "knowing it all"). But those who avoid books completely and just practice on their own through trial and error risk making mistakes other people already made, learned from, and kindly explained how to avoid! Overall I'd say books are invaluable as magical records but are poor substitutes for real-life practice.

[Coffee_and_Burberry]

I think both have their place. If you keep your head in the books all the time you risk armchair magician syndrome—people who can intellectually explain magic but can't feel it on an intuitive level and thus never experience any concrete benefits from their dabbling (besides the shallow ego rush of "knowing it all"). But those who avoid books completely and just practice on their own through trial and error risk making mistakes other people already made, learned from, and kindly explained how to avoid! Overall I'd say books are invaluable as magical records but are poor substitutes for real-life practice.

That was very well put. And I agree.

[corvidus]

That was very well put. And I agree.

I agree as well
When I read books, I usually have something in the back of my head that I'm looking for to supplement my practice.

[Coffee_and_Burberry]

That was very well put. And I agree.

I agree as well
When I read books, I usually have something in the back of my head that I'm looking for to supplement my practice.

^ Same.

[Maya The Generator]

Books can be wrong just like people as they are written by them.

So I read the books to find patterns of mindset more than actually read its content. But content is cool too, I just always look at it with distance so often I find small things that change my perspective on something even not related.

Personal experience thou I would put slightly above book.

Praise Teh Sun \[T]/ [cool] [yay]

[Shinichi]

Some things are written in some books in very particular ways for very specific reasons. A lot of the old spells and rituals, the old alchemical formulas and magic words, are organized in specific ways because that specific organization is part of what makes that particular thing powerful.

This kind of old magick that I'm talking about is a lot like cooking. If a given spell is a recipe, then that recipe is very important, because if the creator of that recipe is any good then the recipe will allow you to take certain ingredients (be it food or metaphysical forces), blend them together a certain way, and reliably get a result from this (be it a good food or a cast spell). Of course, if you are educated in how a recipe works, what all the individual ingredients do and how changing the recipe will change the desired outcome, of course you can and should change things up to fit the needs of whatever your given circumstances are. One of the reasons we use old words like "Craft" is because Magick is a very personal and customizable thing.

Experience, of course, is the backbone of evolution. But without Knowledge, of which books by nature record, there can be no Wisdom. There are tons of crappy books out there, but there are also a few gems floating around, and ignoring the whole would mean you lose the benefit of those few precious pearls. It also makes your learning longer and more difficult in the end, since you pursue an entirely personal journey, when it is rather easy to dig into a few good books and learn many things that speed up your development.

But being a scribe, I'm rather biased when it comes to books. [yay]



~:Shin:~

[Coffee_and_Burberry]

Books can be wrong just like people as they are written by them.

So I read the books to find patterns of mindset more than actually read its content. But content is cool too, I just always look at it with distance so often I find small things that change my perspective on something even not related.

Personal experience thou I would put slightly above book.

Praise Teh Sun \[T]/ [cool] [yay]

...
Books were in-fact written by people so this is correct. I like to use them to make logical coorilations that apply to my experience. Common sense is not a trait many have. Just because you read it in a book does not make it true. Better judgement through experience is in my opinion, your best guide to a proper journey in knowledge in occult related matters. Though there are those who are not open to the unseen driving forces behind it, yet are interested in it. However that inhibits them from real experience when the wrong kind of skepticism gets in the way. Couple that with a lack of patience and laziness, and you will often get a "pretender". I cannot stand those people, most of them being women... its some outward appearance for attention. Pathetic. 98% of pentacle necklace sales LOLOLOL.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

I don't think I'd argue with any of that. For a long time I've been one of those people who read and read and read and, in the same way taht Robin Williams criticized criticized Matt Damon's character in Good Will Hunting, I couldn't tell you anything that you couldn't have picked up and read on your own.

Part of my experience has been cheating - I've turned to dissociatives (ie. 2nd and 3rd plateau dxm - I share this information so other people can profit by it rather than needing to take the same risks) many times and it's given me a couple reinforcements; that what I experience as myself in the immediate sense fits the monad description well, that if I drill down past my usual five senses I'll find a little ball of sparkling white light running on a proverbial hamster wheel. More accurately experiencing itself as something like the top brass of the body and I'd clearly state that while it circumscribes my conscious self it's significantly more and my working hypothesis is this is what many Kabalists might think of as the Tiphareth center albeit it does seem to resonate with the Book of the Law description of Hadit. The other thing I've had reinforced is the idea that all of this is coming up through and aggregated by the nerves rather than generated by them - that's a double edged sword because in a lot of ways it takes very specialized training or knowledge to break free of a life experience governed by materialistic laws all the same as if the neurons had generated it. Also I might add that Stuart Hameroff's current research seems to vet that idea - that our microtubules are quantum-computing.

Past that, I really feel like books are a crap shoot. Part of the reason I felt like I had to read so many books is I felt like I could read an author, feel like they said not only great and lofty things but also things that were incredibly cogent in their own way - until I read someone else saying equally amazing and seemingly cogent things who'd be saying something significantly different. The cosmology of Seth, the cosmologies of Rudolph Steiner and Max Hiendel, the cosmologies of Blavatski and AP Sinnett, the cosmology of LCdSM or Rene Guenon, they all seem to have different camps and the splits are constant. I think that's where I tend to just try to see what I can mine from each book I read, let it go, and I think I'd be much wiser to pick up the same books I have and read them all over again in a years time to see what new things I could absorb - truthfully while the text in the book doesn't change the reader, their cognition, and what they know or don't know or what's missing from the next big eureka moment seems to change constantly.

That's pretty much it though. I'd think the only way one might hold their esoteric experiences against books is at least to see who else has experienced a thing, how they describe it, if there's a terminology for it, if so you at least have a road that's been traveled and you have added emphasis that it happened. If it's something really wild that seems to fit nothing you've ever heard before and it's a really big detail rather than a small one - that's where if I had that kind of experience I'd have to ask myself whether I'd overlayed it in some manner, interpreted it before my conscious self could get a clean copy, or possibly that it was just a bad pizza episode.

[Desecrated]

"Personally, I think when people do it "by the book" it lacks power, emotion, and the driving force that is even behind 'magick'."

In this case, books are like roadmaps. Reading a map, won't teach you how to drive a car. But if you do know how to drive, a map can help you get to your destination quicker.
Now, it's perfectly fine to drive down every road and try it out by experience, sooner or later you will get to your destination. You don't need a map/book.

It's just helpful.

[Stukov]

Talking generally about anything in the world, books are good for learning about experiences you may not be able to experience yourself. However, reading a book will never be as valuable as having the experience yourself.

Speaking directly to the occult, I've never studied anything and was always self taught. I used a rational mind, thought critically, and tested as empirically as you can with non-physical phenomenon.

[Coffee_and_Burberry]

Talking generally about anything in the world, books are good for learning about experiences you may not be able to experience yourself. However, reading a book will never be as valuable as having the experience yourself.

Speaking directly to the occult, I've never studied anything and was always self taught. I used a rational mind, thought critically, and tested as empirically as you can with non-physical phenomenon.

...
I'm half and half. Half self taught and half from books. I had to go to books when I needed to make connections that I could not make myself.