In a previous post, I offered some options for people interested in getting started with divination. But divination is only one piece of the puzzle – and usually not the one people are most interested in when they find themselves drawn to the occult. What about magic? How does one get started? In this post I’ll offer a handful of options, along with some practical advice.
Getting started can be one of the biggest challenges for newcomers – how does one even begin? There are an overwhelming number of books, courses, and gurus available, and the number seems to double every year. With the advent of generative AI, the number of beginner guides on esoteric topics has exploded. It has never been more difficult to sift the needles from the hay.
In fact, the problem tends to be even more insidious. Most ritual magicians are scholars at heart. We have a habit of collecting books like magpies. There’s always one more grimoire to acquire, one more translation to peruse, one more philosophical text to consider. The risk being, of course, that we spend our time reading about the works of others and never actually do any work of our own. The more one learns, the clearer it becomes how little one actually knows, and the more daunting the prospect of starting to practice seems. Such magicians can give you a dozen different people’s theories about what magic is, but have never actually worked a spell themselves.
The best way to combat this is to choose a single system and actually work it. You can continue to read to your heart’s content, but base your practice on a single source. Choose one that is complete unto itself, and then actually work through the progression of exercises as prescribed. Magic is hard. It’s a skill that, like any other, takes time and diligent practice to develop. Someone who spent years reading about cooking without stepping into a kitchen, or spent years reading about self-defense without stepping onto a mat, would never be anything more than a nerdy amateur. So choose a source, and work through it diligently. How do you choose? I’m glad you asked.
John Michael Greer has this conception of three foundational pillars of practice: meditation, divination, and ritual. He contends that any tradition that gives a solid grounding in those three things will lay the foundation for a rich magical practice. In truth, you can make it pretty far with only these three foundational pillars.
This is essentially where I started, when I first got serious about studying ritual magic. I studied divination (in the form of tarot). I spent fifteen or twenty minutes each day in a simple mindfulness meditation. And I practiced the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram at least once, and sometimes twice, each day. In terms of esoteric practice – that was it. And the results I got from that were both transformative and profound. It’s a great place to start, if your interest is primarily in magic as a tool for spiritual growth.
If you’re looking for something more focused on real-world results, you can do a lot worse than Franz Bardon’s Initiation Into Hermetics. It’s a great primer on practical energy work. It’s a straightforward program, but not an easy one. If you’ve never followed a rigorous magical training program before, it will kick your ass. But it will give you the skills needed to affect change in the world around you.
For a long time I thought that Initiation Into Hermetics was the best beginner resource out there. Then I found Quareia. Josephine McCarthy’s Quareia training course is a masterwork of practical occultism. It has enough exercises and hands-on work to keep someone busy for decades, and the entire thing is available online for free. But the beauty of it is that it doesn’t require a decade-long commitment.
The first module of the Apprentice section – eight lessons in total – covers not only Greer’s three fundamental pillars, but several other basic magical skills: the development of inner senses, esoteric hygiene, and simple protection rituals. It’s not a ton of material – one can work through it in a matter of months – but it gives an excellent grounding in fundamental magical skills.
If at that point you want to branch out into some other system, more power to you. If you find the format of Quareia appeals to you, great! There are well over two hundred more lessons to work through.
Once you have your foundation in place, where do you go from there? It’s really up to you, but I recommend reading primary and academic sources related to whatever tradition interests you. You want to explore the Golden Dawn? Read through the works of Dion Fortune and Israel Regardie. Crowley is more your jam? Pick up a copy of Book 4. Interested in shamanism? Mircea Eliade literally wrote the book on it. Hermeticism? Break out the works of Plato and the Corpus Hermeticum. Solomonic magic? Joseph H. Peterson has published a stunning range of translations of classic grimoires. Wherever you choose to go, you’ll have the skills to better understand what you’re reading and the confidence to bring it into your personal practice.
Ultimately, how you choose to structure your practice is less important than having a structured practice at all. There are some things you only pick up through experience, and magic is ultimately one of those things. So choose a path, and start walking. If you’ve been waiting for a sign that you were ready to step into the circle, consider this that sign.
It’s fine to start with something simple. So long as you start today.
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