Where did all of you magical folks start?

[Nexus]

This is a really open and newbie type of question but I'm curious about where you started in your journey; such as your first Spirit/Entity, what senses you first noticed developing, what you did to develop other senses if you had, and generally speaking what you feel lead you to where you are now in a nutshell.

It doesn't have to be too explicitly detailed or a biography of your entire life. It can just be a few paragraphs, or even shorter, if you wanted. As an example I'll write mine but I feel as if it won't be as enlightening as some of yours would be haha.

"I officially started my journey a year or two ago, my first companion was a Vampire Hybrid, and the first senses I noticed developing were Claircognizance. I've used conversations with people to develop that sense, and have since been exploring other exercises to jump start other senses.

I haven't found any recommendation worthy books yet, but I find these forums to be helpful enough so far.

In short, I guess I'm here because other paths just didn't work and I find this path to be much more rewarding and involved. Though in a way, my first Companion is also a reason, as I wouldn't have gone on the journey if she hadn't brought me back to her listing so many times. So I'm thankful to her for that."

[Cerber]

it started when I was maybe 6-7y old and my mum showed me how to call up spirits to talk to.

[laalbieglna]

I ... hate seeing so many views and so few replies, so I feel compelled to say I read this and am seriously thinking about how to even answer it. It's complicated. Like where to start? Because there's childhood experiences, being a teenage seeker, being a pagan who knew it all, and then this organic progression over decades of adulthood, so looking back I'm like "hmmm... where did I start, really?"

Man, I want to write a totally awesome answer for you, though, filled with gems of wisdom, or at least interesting stories...
Fail.
Still thinking.

[Cerber]

It's hard to answer. Depending what exactly you mean. Interacting with spirits did start very early, but spirit keeping started only a year ago. But I had spirit "companions" before I start "keeping" them. There were always around some so called "guides", "unbounds" and "others". So depends.
Same with other questions. If we count only "spirit keeping" chapter companions, then my Imp girl from SnS a year ago, was my very first.

[laalbieglna]

Same. I have interacted with spirits as long as I can remember. I first acquired 2 spirit companions in my mid-teens but didn't know anything about spiritkeeping so didn't do anything purposefully in relationship to them except know they were around (when I believed that). I had, looking back, a really amorphous religious and witchcraft practice, even when I was a professional tarot reader and worked in a witch store, though at the time I thought I was very very serious. A shit-ton of reading and study of world religion and the occult happened all throughout this time, from the time I learned to read, continuously.

Then about ten years were taken up almost exclusively with coming out, processing teenage sexual abuse, coming out again, having and ending an abusive marriage, being professionally committed to the sex industry, and doing very deep, very dark sexual shadow work, concurrent with 20 years of undiagnosed chronic illness that had begun at puberty, and the last three of which were completely out of control, continuous, horrendous physical illness. So looking back, this was definitely some deep spiritual journeying, but it didn't look like anything recognizably so from the outside, and I wouldn't necessarily have called it that at the time.

Reading and study happened the whole time. Animism happened the whole time. Magickal practice happened the whole time. "Seeing" (actually claircognizance for me) and interacting with spirit beings was happening the whole time. The path I'm on now, though, didn't really begin until having a child and slowly starting to explore what I was and wasn't going to incorporate as our family path. It became personal seeking for a consistent spiritual practice in 2015, and a deity directly speaking to me and blowing the world as I'd known it apart in 2016, turning me from a soft polytheist Wiccan witch into a hardcore devotional polytheistic religious person virtually overnight.

Spiritkeeping as practiced here didn't arrive on my scene until I discovered S&S in 2017, but having and outwardly acknowledging guides, guardians, teachers, counselors, ancestors, familiars, nature spirits, location spirits, the Dead, servitors, and spirits in general, was going on the whole time. And formally cultivating relationships with specific spirits, including "keeping" several, goes back prior to 2014 but I am not sure exactly when it began.

So there's my drawn out biography you weren't actually asking for.

[Nexus]

I ... hate seeing so many views and so few replies, so I feel compelled to say I read this and am seriously thinking about how to even answer it. It's complicated. Like where to start? Because there's childhood experiences, being a teenage seeker, being a pagan who knew it all, and then this organic progression over decades of adulthood, so looking back I'm like "hmmm... where did I start, really?"

Man, I want to write a totally awesome answer for you, though, filled with gems of wisdom, or at least interesting stories...
Fail.
Still thinking.

I thought that I'd clarified in the initial post but for the sake of being direct, there is no right or wrong answer to this question. There is no specific answer or even a specific way to answer. The answer or answers that pop into your head are the way to go, anything else is just an extra amount of awesome.

[Aprophis]

My whole meta-life started with Castaneda, went into hermeticism and from there I went to servitors and finally spirits when I first stumbled into CH.
My first Sense to develop was delusion, that was a nice wrench thrown into my cogs. But the first thing to develop later on was clairvoyance, aside from feeling energy all my life without realizing it.
Mostly I am where I am because I'm a stubborn ass who can't give up. There were many times where I wanted to throw it all out. And because I want to know what's possible, what reality is and how everything really ticks.

[Noctua]

I started when I was born and then I started again when I was a teenager after a bout of ultra-nihilism, which actually segued me into deeper mystical practice and here I am now.

[Yekarah]

I started to become slightly fascinated in the spiritual side of things in my teens, but I was also attending a Christian school at that time and was heavily conditioned by my Christian friends against it (lots of fearmongering and hostility), so I put it in the backburner for several years and would forget about it. When I was in my early twenties, I became interested in it again but only slightly as I was more agnostic, sceptical etc. A few years later, I would be interested in mythology including Norse mythology but for a brief time, then life happened again lol. Then after losing a family member, and experiencing narcissistic abuse, I turned to meditation and felt like I was healing for the first time, from that I started becoming fascinated in spiritual things again. I would later meet new people who happened to be mostly atheists but some were fascinated in occult things but it was probably for imagery and rebellion, who knows lol. I've ended up parting ways with those people (fallout), and had ventured into a more solitary lifestyle and became interested in all kinds of new things. Strangely some music lead me to a different path, or pushed me to it unknowingly ( I've listened to a lot of satanic music, i.e metal etc. nothing convinced me for some reason). I would listen to other music, it was less aggressive but dark, then it lead to films, being in my own world and thoughts, just rediscovering myself, walking my own path... I dunno but something changed. I finally stepped into "the dark side" 2 years ago when I suddenly became interested in candle magic for some reason. One thing led to another, and I then discovered (should I say "rediscovered") demons but from a different perspective (outside of the christian view), and the rest is history.

My journey into the occult has been growing deeper and deeper since.

[Yekarah]

( I've listened to a lot of satanic music, i.e metal etc. nothing convinced me for some reason). I would listen to other music, it was less aggressive but dark,

Wanted to clarify the music part - not all metal music has satanic lyrics and imagery, not all of it is "Satanic" as there are many other sub genres with different other subject matters, different belief systems etc.