Kind of a throwaway account here, but what the hell. This isn't the sort of thing I like to talk about. I think a lot of posters will be reticent to describe their exploits.

I started getting into this sort of thing about a decade ago. I think the very first sigil I tried out was for money, as I was pretty hard-up at that point. Within a week, several old textbooks that I had listed on amazon all sold and I got a nice chunk of change. That experience made me curious.

Similarly, there was a girl I knew in the city who I'd fallen out of touch with, but wanted to get back into contact with. Managed to summon her up and bump into her on the street one day. Things progressed from there.

Money and sex, of course. I think magic was also instrumental in getting the mushrooms for my first mushroom trip.

One time I tried to summon up the "high strangeness" of the mothman incident and bring it to my city. I didn't quite get the reality-bending weirdness I wanted, but a week later I saw a post on craigslist jokingly written as a love letter from John Keel to the mothman. That was funny.

When I was writing a paper that was going nowhere (in revision for over two years) eventually I was like "fuck it" and tried magic. The very next draft was accepted immediately. There was a total 180 in the tone of the reviewers. Others more experienced than me said these reviewer comments were the best/ easiest they'd ever seen.

I did a sigil once to quit drinking. This turned out to be extremely dangerous and fucking scary-- there was a very serious health scare for about a couple weeks. It fucking worked though, but it scared the shit out of me. I hardly drink any more.

Other things... sowing harmony between relations, healing. Healing myself. etc