Let's just say that I'm a student of worldly and otherworldly knowledge. Know that you can study damn near anything without having to engage in its practices.
I've been studying the occult ever since I learned that I was hexed in the early-mid 2000s. It was serious black magic. Whoever was behind it will forever be a mystery to me, but I'm at peace with that now. I distinctly remember the moment when the entity that was inhabiting me for years finally punched out from behind my sternum and left me in the middle of the night. We stared at each other for about five seconds for what felt like a very long time as it was hovering over me near the ceiling. It was a wisp-like creature manifested as a small ball of light (a bit smaller than a tennis ball) with a long tail. There was no face for me to look at, but I swear to you, I felt like the damn thing was scared when it was looking at me.
After our little stare-down, it zipped away from my room and fucked off at a very high speed with what appeared to be 0-100 kph in an instant with no acceleration. I sat up in bed to take a deep breath and got up to take a long shower. There wasn't any fear, worry, or anxiety on my end at all. In fact I felt a peaceful, serene calm, like I just finished meditating. All I could think about was trying to find a rational explanation for what I had witnessed. I wish I was a hallucinating, and I wish I was just crazy, but you don't hallucinate the physical sensation of being punched in the chest from the inside like that, followed by seeing something your brain has no prior information to construct a hallucination of.
I made some coffee in the middle of the night and left some text messages for a couple of my close friends to call me the next day as soon as they could - the kind of friends who wouldn't laugh and tell me to GTFOH when I tell them that something outrageous or unbelievable happened. One of my friends is somewhat of an amateur mystic and advised me to look into studying demonology and magic. I said, "magic... are you fucking with me? Magic. Like, fuckin' Merlin the wizard and shit?" He reiterated, "yes, magic. You might not like to hear this, but it's real. But remember this: Whatever you learn,
DO NOT PRACTICE IT!" I laughed at him, but he got angry with me. Let me just say here that this dude never gets angry at anything. He could get punched in the face and not get mad, but I'm telling you he was pissed the fuck off.
So I did as he advised and went down the rabbit hole. I looked through and read texts from all sources, including religious texts. I absorbed everything like a man possessed (

). I read grimoires, academic and historic books, and commentaries on magical practices that read like something out of a fiction fantasy novel. Believe it or not, but I learned a lot about those beings - jinn - from the religion of Islam. Not the details and minutiae, mind you, but the overarching ideas on what they are and their relation to humanity.
I learned enough to know three things: 1) God is real and we should remember that there is a singular divine spark behind all things in this universe and other universes, 2) reality is not what it seems, and the scientific method has a snowflake's chance in hell of exploring all dimensions of reality, and 3) the world of man and the world of jinn are separate for good reason, and magic attempts to unwisely make rips in the veil between those worlds.