How It All Began...

   One of my earliest memories is that of a vision for what else could an infant mind produce without the aid of words and their meanings. I remember the color of deep blue, almost black. I remember stars filling this color and cherub angels, like the back of some decks of playing cards. This vision has never left me and I don't know how long before I was born that this vision was given to me. I've felt like I was never born. I've felt like I've always existed.

   Though always poor, or you could say just below living comortably, I've always had a gifted imagination and I loved to dress in costumes I would make up. Growing up I always had a facsination with the dark ages. One moment I would imagine I was a knight on a crusade, going off to fight goblins or dragons. Another time I would be a king. A tiny king ruling from a tiny castle. Other times I would fancy myself a wizard.

   Anytime I was outside and a strong gust of wind blew against me I could just picture my robes fluttering behind me. The wind was mine to choose which direction it would flow. There was magic in the wind. My favorite color of the sky was grey. I used to climb alot as a child and I would climb up hills to pretend that I could conjure the storms as they approached.

   When I was in the second grade I told my class mates that I was a werewolf and that I knew the magic spell that could turn a human into an animal. I demonstrated this spell durring recsess on more than one ocasion.

   It started with me finding a suitable stick. I then carved a large circle in the ground around me. After that I would carve a cross (inverted) in the center and then place the stick vertically on top of the cross. I would neal on the horizontal arms of the cross and bow all the way to the ground. I had some "magic words" that I would recite and when I was done, before I would exit the circle, I traced it with the stick once more in the opposite direction. I would then tell the spectators that on the night of the full moon I would turn into a wolf. Some kids laughed and made fun and some kids didn't say anything and still others remained silent. Was I trying to gain popularity? No. What fool would think that that would make them popular? Was I really trying to turn into a werewolf? Well even at that age I knew that that was physicly impossible, although I knew that if someone could psyche themselves out enough they might believe that they could do such a thing. But what was I trying to prove?

   In the third grade I wrote  two books on magic. The first one which was written in the normal English alphabet spoke of what to ware durring rituals and how to protect one's self when engaging with the spiritual world. The second book was written in red ink and had elaborate and frightening drawings of demons. This book was about demons and how they possessed the living. This book was written in a strange alphabet of my own creation. I still have both books with me to this day.

   Books... Books have always been a big thing to me in my lifetime. I was still in the third grade when I found at the school library books on the devil and on the occult. I might as well had found old copies of Playboy and Hustler! What business did books about summoning demons have in an elementry school library (this wasn't Hogwarts after all)? The librarian looked at me dirty and told me I shouldn't be reading books like these when I checked them out, but what could she do? They were school property and I had every right to check them out! And check them out I did, over and over again. These were the first books I'd read from cover to cover. One book was indeed about werewolves. It did say that people used to proform rituals and make pacts with the devil to change by the light of a full moon. Another book was about the old magicians of the dark ages and how they would sell their souls to the devil to gain power and favor. This is when I first learned of Faust.

   I don't need to go into great detail, one could easilly look it up online and find all the info they need about the story, which some say was true and others say it was just a story. In short there was a doctor named John Faust that was unsatisfied with his life and his work. He was visited by a demon named Mephistopholies that promised the doctor anything he wanted whenever he wanted it for a predeturmined number of years, afterwhich the demon would come back and reclaim his mortal soul. Faust was given magical powers and did such things as making horns sprout from the head of a knight he had angered. The horns were so heavy that the knight couldn't chase after the doctor. Another time he had the demon take him to a witches sabbat. This part intreigued me because I wondered if he needed a demon to show him where the witches party, how could you find one without the aid of supernatural forces?

   Supernatural, now there's a word. Growing up I was told by the world that supernatural was a word for something that wasn't real. By this time I knew that there was no Santa Clause or Easter Bunny. I wasn't even sure that God existed in all his abstractness. Children ask these kind of questions: Is there such a thing as... Sometimes it would be dragons or unicorns, and other times it would be vampires, ghosts, witches, and for these latter three their were always mixed answers. Some grown-ups would say yes and some would say no. And with witches I always got more yes's than no's. But witches do magic and magic is supernatural and supernatural to me at that time meant that it wasn't real. But here I was reading about real people in the past that were famose for being just that. Wizards and witches. I quickly started to lose faith in anything that so called grown-ups had to say.

   It was in the fourth grade that I found out that I had more common sence than my teacher when I asked her if there were such things as ghosts. Now I already knew her reply. I knew it would be wrong and very close minded and I already knew the correct answer, for what I aske was a trick question. I didn't ask if she believed in them. I asked her flat out if they exsisted. And you already know her answer. No. I just smiled, leaned back and said okay. In my mind what she should have said was simply, "Some people believe and others don't. Nobody has proven that they do. I personally don't." That would have been very exceptable to me, but a flat out no? Is she going to steak her carrere on that? That moment I lost faith, faith in the system, faith in authority. But not faith in God... Not yet anyway.

   I used to ask that question alot growing up. To random adults I would ask if they believed in ghosts. Again some would say yes and some would say no. In which case I would plea my convincing argument, "Well do you believe in angels?"

   "Yes"

   "Well aren't they just ghosts in heaven?"

   "Well..."

   "And what about the Holy Ghost?"

   They really didn't have much room to tell me no after that, I mean were they going to be so bold as to tell a kid that God didn't exist?

   Sorry kid, there's no Superman, no Santa Clause and no Jesus Christ.

   Ahh, but some people still said that there are witches out there, somewhere, and I was damned and deturmined to find out where!

   I'm not sure where and when I'd heard about it (probibly in those books from the school library), but there was a book that I'd learned of. It was called The Key of Solomon. Solomon was in the Bible. He was the son of King David who slew the giant Goliath. Solomon was said to be the wisest of men and he was a Wizard King. The book rolled around in my mind for a long time until one day I decided to look in the phone book to see if there were any stores in town that might sell, well, let's say magical supplies. I found one; the world famous Papa Jim's.

   It didn't take long before I was there gawking at all the wonderous things they had there. Candles of many shapes and colors, incense, oils, stones, statures, and trinkets, and most importantly... books! And there it was, just like something out of a movie, The Greater Key of Solomon. It was in hard back and they also had the Lesser Key, but I was told by my mom that she could only afford one for now. How cool was that? How many other parents would tell there kids, I'll get you the demon summoning book next time. For now just be happy with this book of ancient spells and ritual preperation?

   So by the time middle school came I had my occult supply conection and I was reading Solomons Key in sixth grade math instead of paying atention to whatever they were trying to teach me. Papa J's was a place that I visited often and before long I was practicing simple rituals of consicration, talismans and so forth.

   I bought this book, a small paperback called True Magick: A beginners guide by Amber K. I read it once and though I could identify with it and wanted to believe the stuff it was saying, I was still too green. My young mind was still too simple to figure out on my own the teqniques described in the book. I quickly started to loose faith in occultism, not that I had a whole lot to begin with.

   I'm not sure if I ever did have faith, but what I had was even stronger. I had facination and I wanted to believe. How could I if nothing significantly supernatural had ever happened to me?