Once upon a time, I was heavily into the occult. I got out of it for several years, but recently got interested again. Since I was twenty or so my magick of choice has been the chaotic sort. Even when I stopped practicing, the basic principles of chaos magick influenced my life.
For this first post on the subject, I’m going to tell the story of how I got seriously into the occult.
By the time I was 13 I already a witchy-minded atheist who owned a tarot deck and read paranormal books from the library. But the life-changer was when my mom’s co-worker, the cop who was the city’s specialist in occult matters, hired me as his infant’s babysitter.
Understand that this was 1989, the height of the Satanic Panic here in America. Police departments had “occult specialists”. And Mark, my boss, had the most amazing work-related library ever. In the months I babysat his kid, I read all of LaVey’s works, several by Crowley, Buckland’s “Book of Witchcraft”… all kinds of books that were mind-blowing for a 13 year old who read fast and was hungry for knowledge.
So yeah. I can thank the Satanic Panic for the beginnings of my occult education.
I flirted with Wicca and Thelema, but then discovered chaos magick through Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles in 1996. It stuck.
About a year ago, just before the pandemic, I started feeling disconnected from any sort of spirituality. I hadn’t practiced magick in a few years, hadn’t meditated or anything… In the past two months I’ve started finding myself again. I hate that term, finding myself, but I really did feel rather lost.
I’m glad that’s changing. I can’t wait to see where this goes…