Hello, I'm a girl from a very religious, Christian country.
I was always a spiritual person - I always thought I could feel nature around me. Now I don't consider myself religious at all. I am an electrical engineer and a scientist so religion is not really something I believe in. I think that everything can be explained by science, but we don't have enough knowledge to do so yet. Even though I consider myself highly science based, I still have a feeling that intentions I put into making food, preparing tea or some other things like that, always manifest. I recently got into tarot first and then found some information about magic. I am not really sure what to do right now. I do want to learn how to practice magic, but I don't even know what kind of magic would suit me. I also found out that you don't have to be particularly religious in order to practice magic so that is a good beginning for me I guess. I'll also tell one story: In orthodox Christianity we sometimes practice what witches would call smoke cleansing (tho it's now required to open windows and doors so that the smoke goes out of the house). We light up a coal (i think it's called coal in English, though I'm not sure) and we put little cube on top. Those cubes are made out of different ingredients and they small fantastic. Usually a priest should come and do this ritual at home, however it is okay to do it yourself. first time i did this i went to the second room and the bowl i was holding in my hand to carry the coal around the house suddenly broke. It felt though someone just kicked it out of my hand. I thought it was because the bowl was suddenly too hot because of the coal, but that wasn't the case when i put the coal on the same type of bowl. It has never happened after that.
if you have any suggestions on where to start and what should i do please give suggestions. thank you in advance.