TL;DR, have you ever played with paranormal rituals, tried to talk to ghosts etc?
My experiences:
In this post I relate a tiny bit of my experiences playing with the paranormal. Scary stories, occult rituals, religious ceremonies, new-agey rituals (which are usually just bizarre misinterpretations of actual religious practices from different cultures), I’ve done a lot. Sadly, I’ve never gotten to go on a ghost hunt like on Ghost Hunters (back when it was actually good), which is something I’ve always wanted to do. Oh well, I imagine it would be absurdly boring in reality anyway.
Like I said in this linked post, I’ve never done anything that requires grievous bodily harm, sacrifice (of people or animals), or inconveniencing others who weren’t already up for playing paranormal detective with me (i.e. bothering secretaries in hospitals). Which isn’t to say I never mildly hurt myself intentionally (I’ve pricked my finger and pulled out tiny amounts of hair), but no wrist slitting stuff or anything like that.
I’ve probably tested hundreds, if not thousands of rituals. For those of you on the edge of your seats (or the Scooby Gang ready at any time to pounce on a paranormal thread and helpfully explain that the paranormal is fake), no absolutely none worked. None of them that had a clearly verifiable outcome anyway. Obviously the really fuzzy ones like “luck” worked in that “kind of maybe” way where they make you feel luckier, or you experiencing confirmation bias, but sorry, I can’t offer any working “Greater Summon Satan’s Buttcheeks” ritual for those of you just dying to pull the ultimate party prank.
These spells can get hilariously complex. There’s one that I found really funny, though I can’t recall the specifics. It was a summoning ritual of some sort that required you to, on a new moon, take a walnut shell (I’m certain it was a walnut shell). Fill it with a drop of blood, some saliva, I think maybe a little semen or vaginal goop (depending on your sex), and the rest with lime juice. Then every night until the full moon you had to do… something. I can’t recall what that something was, but it was really boring, like lighting a candle and meditating (with said disgusting walnut). And then on the full moon get next your circle of white salt (you DID remember to make a circle of white salt right? What kind of occultist are you?), with your Lesser Gross Magical Walnut of Bodily Fluids of course, and chant some silly phrase. I loved that one even though I knew nothing was going to happen if for no reason other than how ridiculous it was.
There’s an absolutely huge amount of theory involved in this whole thing. A lot of it mutually contradictory being different cites and sects of course. For a while I figured that was partially a side effect of how back around in 2006 or so, back when I was really into this stuff, the internet still by and large had communities that you got to by following “recommended pages” links or by recommendations from people in their forums, rather than searching around, though that was starting to change a lot. However, looking around now I notice the same thing happening with very mutually exclusive moods and theories. I don’t know if these people simply don’t notice, don’t care, or what. I suppose they could disagree with other sites’ practices, but I’ve never seen any holy wars between different occult sites, though that doesn’t mean it never happened.
But when I say “theory” I mean it. It’s all very… academic I guess? For something as weird, often new-agey, and unverifiable I’ve seen academic papers on the stuff. And I don’t mean real journals of modern folklore analyzing this stuff. I never really kept tabs so I don’t recall the names, but there were legit, no-joke, “Journals of Demonology”, so-called “academic” conferences, and so-on with a (I assume not very good and/or very biased) peer review process and everything. Which isn’t to say all of it was academic, certainly some sites made no claim or acknowledgment of anything remotely (pseudo-)scientific, but it was there and not especially uncommon to see 10-20 citations on a page from these sources.
Though no matter the community there was always the undercurrent of a Mythbusters-esque “don’t actually do this!” Nobody minded if you tried luck spells or peace spells or whatever, but under no circumstances should you chant certain words or try to summon an imp. “This isn’t some silly RP forum and you’ll be in for a very rude awakening if you mess around with this stuff.” Or “it’s definitely possible, but I won’t explain how on this page because some dumb kid will actually summon a Succubus and get his soul sucked out through his dick.” Or anything violent (like a “Magic Missile” sort of spell) would have some objection, occasionally moral, but more typically something like “if you do this without understanding the magical theory, you might mess up and the energy might turn inward and destroy you.” Though obviously a lot of pages would do the “you shouldn’t do this but here’s exactly how to do it” thing. Most harmful spells were completely useless to actually hurt anyone anyway, since they required direct line of sight. I mean, unless you think your High School/Workplace/Bar/The Mall/Subway station/Wherever you’re gonna do this is just going to let you draw a circle of white salt, a pentacle, put lit candles at all of the points of said pentacle and start chanting ominously while gesticulating like a madman (needless to say, I only tried these ones in private with good-natured friends).
Either way, it’s really fun, though I don’t do it much any more. I don’t think I’d ever run out of weird rituals to try, but I sadly just stopped. I did it mostly alone for years and I don’t think I can do it anymore without friends to joke about it with. But at my age people are starting to either settle into their status as “true believer” who I would generally tend to avoid discussing this stuff with, and “totally uninterested”/“thinking it’s a childish waste of time.” Ah well.