Friday, January 21, 2011

By Way of Introduction

Welcome to "Turning the Magic Around"!  I'm glad you decided to stop and rest your eyes on this blog for a moment.

I'm Ocean Delano, and as a first post on this blog, I'd like to introduce myself and talk about why I've started it.

I've been studying the occult, and practicing magic in one form or another, since 1997.  In that time I went from practicing Wicca, to delving into High Magic laced with Chaos Magic.  Magic was a first love, so to speak, for me.  But somewhere along the way, I got lost...big time.  Through various reasons, whether it was moral restrictions on magic, or attitudes about magic for mundane ends...I did less and less of it.  On top of that, bad technique combined with really bad teachings learned early on to cause me to use ineffective methods.  Flash forward to late 2010, and I had become a very ineffective magical practitioner.

I had been wondering where to turn to change that, when I came across sites and blogs online by what feels like a whole community of magical practitioners of various traditions who use magic for mundane ends.  Some of them do it professionally.  Jason Miller's writings struck a chord with me, and so I obtained his book The Sorcerer's Secrets and read it as well as sections from his Strategic Sorcery blog.  Almost from the start I learned of things I had been doing wrong.  I was so impressed I signed up for his Strategic Sorcery course! (student #212, cycle 4)

And that's why I started this blog.  It will be a chronicle of my progress as I work through the Strategic Sorcery course, as well as for my evolving thoughts and opinions, reactions to other articles, and my magical practice in general.

Under the section titled "Also Check Out..." you'll find other members of the blog community who have inspired me and unknowingly re-schooled me a little as well.  I highly recommend whoever is listed in that section.  They are awesome people who are making an awesome contribution.  I only hope I can make even a fraction of the contribution they do.

So that's it.  I'm done with cowering behind threats of karma or of butterfly effects.  I'm tired of feeling guilty for having another edge or advantage.  I'm tired of moralisms by people who don't do this stuff.  I'm done with naive, ineffective techniques and approaches.  I am going to take this magic and turn it back around, and I am going to make it work for me.

Impotence is out; effectiveness is in.

2 comments:

  1. "Let success be your proof!" Thank you for adding me to your blog roll! It sounds like we're coming from similar positions. I regularly have to watch my mouth around my Druid group because my magic ethics are much more pragmatic than karmic. Brother Moloch's Yahoo groups are another source that has been shaping my magical ethic.

    I'm in Cycle 2 myself, though I never did get a student number! I have to talk to Jason about that.

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  2. I'll have to keep that Yahoo group in mind. Brother Moloch is one of the people who led me to Jason in the first place.

    I must say, I've enjoyed reading about your forays into minimalism. It has inspired me a bit, since I've been wanting to inject some minimalism into my life for quite a while now. After I moved back in August, I was ready to get rid of a great deal of my stuff!

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